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For communities on the margins of hostile or indifferent power structures, the political order can be experienced as a force whose acts are not motivated by reasons in accord with recognizable norms. Power, then, as a social phenomenon, is naturalized in the sense that it is dehumanized. Derrida explored some of this territory in his final seminar, the Beast and the Sovereign. Power becomes a latent animality, structuring social life as it removes itself from mechanisms of accountability. At the same time, the Black church ritual, in the United States and elsewhere, provides an experience of a self-sustaining power, whose invisibility is taken as coextensive with its omnipresence. The act of worship becomes a project of counter-habituation whereby power can be constituted as just and life-affirming. Simone Weil’s spiritual writings on the necessity of God’s love can be of some assistance here, but her concern with “decreation” is on its face a self-erasing theological enterprise, the sociopolitical implications of which would seem to put it at odds with a movement, among marginalized people, toward increased recognition. A look at the relation between Weil’s writing method—which I analyze as a kind of endophrasis—and Edmund Husserl’s transcendental understanding of the self provides a way to reorganize our understanding of the sociocultural project supported by the ritual. To grasp the counter-habituating project of the ritual, we must see it as founded in non-linguistic thinking and post-linguistic acts. These acts are, in part, improvisational, which is a key to habituating the recognition of higher-order necessity through free activity. They bring the worshiper “through” culturally determined linguistic acts to another kind of experience, in which the freedom to worship an invisible God is manifest.

I outline an approach to the phenomenology of improvised music which takes typification and the development of multi‐ordered phenomenological structures as central. My approach here is firmly in line with classical Husserlian phenomenology, taking the discussion of types in Experience and Judgment (Husserl, 1973) and Brudzińska (2015) as guide. I provide a phenomenological analysis of musical types as they are found in improvisational contexts, focusing on jazz in the 20th century. Styles are higher‐order musical types. Musical types are structures that are temporally “thick,” relying on sedimented typification and knowledge, driving expectations as definitional. In most forms of music (including improvised music), musical styles involve maintaining a balance between confirming expectations and flouting expectations. I show that improvised music has a phenomenal structure which is enriched by the communicative and “ real‐time” nature of improvised music. Improvised music can be seen as an exploration of a possibility space rendered by the juxtaposition of the musical types afforded by a performance environment (instrumentation, harmonic and melodic traditions, etc.). I show that improvisation in music is a multi‐vectoral form of communication. The communication is founded in what Dieter Lohmar calls “non‐linguistic thinking.” The expression is constituted in the results of active and synthesis. The culmination of improvisational exploration of possibility spaces is the precisification and enrichment of styles‐as‐types, while in some cases developing new styles in the process.

There is extensive evidence implicating the intestinal microbiota in inflammatory bowel disease [IBD], but no microbial agent has been identified as a sole causative agent. Bacteroidales are numerically dominant intestinal organisms that associate with the mucosal surface and have properties that both positively and negatively affect the host. To determine precise numbers and species of Bacteroidales adherent to the mucosal surface in IBD patients, we performed a comprehensive culture based analysis of intestinal biopsies from pediatric Crohn's disease [CD], ulcerative colitis [UC], and control subjects. We obtained biopsies from 94 patients and used multiplex PCR or 16S rDNA sequencing of Bacteroidales isolates for species identification. Eighteen different Bacteroidales species were identified in the study group, with up to ten different species per biopsy, a number higher than demonstrated using 16S rRNA gene sequencing methods. Species diversity was decreased in IBD compared to controls and with increasingly inflamed tissue. There were significant differences in predominant Bacteroidales species between biopsies from the three groups and from inflamed and uninflamed sites. Parabacteroides distasonis significantly decreased in inflamed tissue. All 373 Bacteroidales isolates collected in this study grew with mucin as the only utilizable carbon source suggesting this is a non-pathogenic feature of this bacterial order. Bacteroides fragilis isolates with the enterotoxin gene [bft], previously associated with flares of colitis, were not found more often at inflamed colonic sites or within IBD subjects. B. fragilis isolates with the ability to synthesize the immunomodulatory polysaccharide A [PSA], previously shown to be protective in murine models of colitis, were not detected more often from healthy versus inflamed tissue.

Background PRO-CTCAE is a library of items that measure cancer treatment-related symptomatic adverse events (NCI Contracts: HHSN261201000043C and HHSN 261201000063C). The objective of this study is to examine the equivalence and acceptability of the three data collection modes (Web-enabled touchscreen tablet computer, Interactive voice response system [IVRS], and paper) available within the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE) measurement system. Methods Participants ( n  = 112; median age 56.5; 24 % high school or less) receiving treatment for cancer at seven US sites completed 28 PRO-CTCAE items (scoring range 0–4) by three modes (order randomized) at a single study visit. Subjects completed one page (approx. 15 items) of the EORTC QLQ-C30 between each mode as a distractor. Item scores by mode were compared using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC); differences in scores within the 3-mode crossover design were evaluated with mixed-effects models. Difficulties with each mode experienced by participants were also assessed. Results 103 (92 %) completed questionnaires by all three modes. The median ICC comparing tablet vs IVRS was 0.78 (range 0.55–0.90); tablet vs paper: 0.81 (0.62–0.96); IVRS vs paper: 0.78 (0.60–0.91); 89 % of ICCs were ≥0.70. Item-level mean differences by mode were small (medians [ranges] for tablet vs. IVRS = −0.04 [−0.16–0.22]; tablet vs paper = −0.02 [−0.11–0.14]; IVRS vs paper = 0.02 [−0.07–0.19]), and 57/81 (70 %) items had bootstrapped 95 % CI around the effect sizes within +/−0.20. The median time to complete the questionnaire by tablet was 3.4 min; IVRS: 5.8; paper: 4.0. The proportion of participants by mode who reported “no problems” responding to the questionnaire was 86 % tablet, 72 % IVRS, and 98 % paper. Conclusions Mode equivalence of items was moderate to high, and comparable to test-retest reliability (median ICC = 0.80). Each mode was acceptable to a majority of respondents. Although the study was powered to detect moderate or larger discrepancies between modes, the observed ICCs and very small mean differences between modes provide evidence to support study designs that are responsive to patient or investigator preference for mode of administration, and justify comparison of results and pooled analyses across studies that employ different PRO-CTCAE modes of administration. Trial registration NCT Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT02158637

Since its initial description in the 1940s and eventual elucidation as a highly evolved pathogenic bacterium, Mycoplasma pneumoniae has come to be recognized as a worldwide cause of primary atypical pneumonia. Beyond its ability to cause severe lower respiratory illness and milder upper respiratory symptoms it has become apparent that a wide array of extrapulmonary infectious and postinfectious events may accompany the infections in humans caused by this organism. Autoimmune disorders and chronic diseases such as asthma and arthritis are increasingly being associated with this mycoplasma, which frequently persists in individuals for prolonged periods. The reductive evolutionary process that has led to the minimal genome of M. pneumoniae suggests that it exists as a highly specialized parasitic bacterium capable of residing in an intracellular state within the respiratory tissues, occasionally emerging to produce symptoms. This review includes discussion of some of the newer aspects of our knowledge on this pathogen, characteristics of clinical infections, how it causes disease, the recent emergence of macrolide resistance, and the status of laboratory diagnostic methods.

There is an increasing need for biomarkers of senescent cell burden to facilitate the selection of participants for clinical trials. p16Ink4a is encoded by the CDKN2A locus, which produces five variant transcripts in humans, two of which encode homologous p16 proteins: p16Inka4a, encoded by p16_variant 1, and p16ɣ, encoded by p16_variant 5. While distinct quantitative polymerase chain reaction primers can be designed for p16_variant 5, primers for p16_variant 1 also measure p16_variant 5 (p16_variant 1 + 5). In a recent clinical trial evaluating the effects of the senolytic combination, dasatinib + quercetin (D + Q), on bone metabolism in postmenopausal women, we found that women in the highest tertile for T‐cell expression of p16_variant 5 had the most robust skeletal responses to D + Q. Importantly, the assessment of p16_variant 5 was more predictive of these responses than p16_variant 1 + 5. Here, we demonstrate that in vitro, p16_variant 1 + 5 increased rapidly (Week 1) following the induction of DNA damage, whereas p16_variant 5 increased later (Week 4), suggesting that p16_variant 5 becomes detectable only when the abundance of senescent cells reaches some threshold. Further analysis identified a SASP panel in plasma that performed as well in identifying postmenopausal women with a positive skeletal response to D + Q. Collectively, our findings provide further support for the T‐cell p16_variant 5 assay as a biomarker for selecting participants in clinical trials of senolytic interventions. In addition, our data indicate that correlated plasma SASP markers could be used in lieu of the more technically challenging T‐cell p16 assay. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04313634. Assessment of T‐cell p16_variant 5 expression may be useful for selecting participants in clinical trials of senolytics. We further characterize p16_variant 5 expression in the context of senescence and demonstrate that correlated plasma senescence‐associated secretory phenotype factors could be used in lieu of the technically challenging T‐cell p16_variant 5 assay.

A Gwinnett citizens task force requested that laws be changed to allow school overcrowding to be a reason for denying rezonings. One state legislator --- Rep. Hugh Floyd (D-Norcross) --- pursued the idea during this year's session of the General Assembly, but his effort received no support from other legislators, county officials or school officials. State Rep. Hugh Floyd (D-Norcross) and the Joint Task Force between the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners and the Gwinnett County Board of Education missed the boat. Instead of asking for a legally questionable law to allow the denial of rezonings based on school overcrowding alone, they should have considered viable, proven, legal options already used in other states for decades. One is a school impact fee, and the other is concurrency. I think that the citizens of Gwinnett County should just drop it. Overcrowding is a problem , but it always will be when you live in a county that is booming in population, like Gwinnett County. If you don't like it, move (just like the people who are selling the land are doing). Maybe if you offer to pay the taxes and maintenance on the land, it wouldn't be sold and would not overcrowd your precious schools!

Purpose The National Cancer Institute's Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE) is a library of question items that enables patient reporting of adverse events (AEs) in clinical trials. This study contributes content validity evidence of the PRO-CTCAE by incorporating cancer patient input of the relevance and comprehensiveness of the item library. Methods Cognitive interviews were conducted among patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy at multiple sites to evaluate comprehension, memory retrieval, judgment, and response mapping related to AE terms (e.g., nausea), attribute terms (regarding frequency, severity, or interference), response options, and recall period. Three interview rounds were conducted with ≥20 patients completing each item per round. Items were modified and retested if ≥3 patients exhibited cognitive difficulties or if experienced by ≤25 % patients. Results One hundred and twenty-seven patients participated (35 % ≤high school, 28 % non-white, and 59 % female). Most AE terms (63/80) generated no cognitive difficulties. The remaining 17 were modified without further difficulties by Round 3. Terms were comprehended regardless of education level. Attribute terms and response options required no modifications. Patient adherence to recall period (7 days) was improved when the reference period was incorporated. Conclusions This study provides evidence confirming comprehension of the US English language versions of items in the PRO-CTCAE library for measuring symptomatic AEs from the patient perspective within the context of cancer treatment. Several minor changes were made to the items to improve item clarity, comprehension, and ease of response judgment. This study helps to establish the content validity of PRO-CTCAE items for patient reporting of AEs during cancer treatment.

The work detailed here is part of an international initiative on the evaluation of dam safety simulation software for internal erosion performance and best practices. The primary experiments involve simulating uncertainty in the failure events of two dams with two different models: DLBreach and WinDAM C. DLBreach is a physically-based dam/levee breach model developed by Wu. WinDAM C is also a physically based dam breach model capable of analyzing both dam overtopping and internal erosion. The dams selected for the analysis include a 1.3 m high dam tested in the lab and a larger 15.56 m high dam, which suffered a failure in the field. The findings from these experiments are extended with a further analysis on variance, sensitivity, and optimization. Finally, a regression model is trained using the results of these simulators as an inquiry into how well such a system can be captured using machine learning techniques. The results of these experiments, together with the results of the other members of the initiative, improve our understanding of the influences that users bring to using these tools.

The menstrual cycle influences function in various tissues in the body. We sought to determine if menstrual cycle phase could influence mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle in females. Twenty‐nine females with regular menstrual cycles were randomized to have a vastus lateralis muscle biopsy during either the early follicular or luteal phase. High‐resolution respirometry was used to determine mitochondrial respiration on permeabilized muscle fibers. Glutamate/malate LEAK respiration was significantly higher during the luteal phase compared to the early follicular phase. Glutamate/malate/succinate LEAK respiration was the same during both menstrual cycle phases, as was maximal coupled and uncoupled respiration. There were no differences in fatty acid‐supported respiration. The fatty acid‐supported coupling efficiency ratios of 1‐OcM (octanoylcarnitine/malate) LEAK over maximal coupled respiration and 1‐OcM LEAK over maximal uncoupled respiration were both significantly higher in mitochondria from the early follicular phase than in the luteal phase. Mitochondrial H2O2 emission (glutamate/malate/succinate supported) was significantly increased in muscle from the early follicular phase. We detected no differences in mitochondrial content using citrate synthase activity between phases of the menstrual cycle. Collectively, our observations demonstrate a limited influence of the menstrual cycle on certain measures of submaximal respiration, coupling efficiencies, and H2O2 emission. The influence of the menstrual cycle was examined and found to influence elements of mitochondrial respiration and hydrogen peroxide release but not maximal respiration or citrate synthase activity.