When a widely reused ontology appears in a new version which is not compatible with older versions, the ontologies reusing it need to be updated accordingly. Ontobull has been developed to automatically update ontologies with new term IRI(s) and associated metadata to take account of such version changes. To use the Ontobull web interface a user is required to (i) upload one or more ontology OWL source files; (ii) input an ontology term IRI mapping; and (where needed) (iii) provide update (...) settings for ontology headers and XML namespace IDs. Using this information, the backend Ontobull Java program automatically updates the OWL ontology files with desired term IRIs and ontology metadata. The Ontobull subprogram BFOConvert supports the conversion of an ontology that imports a previous version of BFO. A use case is provided to demonstrate the features of Ontobull and BFOConvert. (shrink)

Introduction: Liposomal bupivacaine (LB) is a long-acting analgesic that, due to its liposomal formulation, purportedly extends its analgesic effect up to 72 hours. However, the clinical efficacy of LB appears mixed. This systematic review seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of liposomal bupivacaine in improving postoperative outcomes compared to ropivacaine (ROPI), another commonly used long-acting analgesic. -/- Materials and Methods: Prospective and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the efficacy of LB compared to ROPI were selected for review. Primary outcomes included hospital (...) length of stay (LOS) and postoperative opioid consumption measured in oral morphine equivalents (OME). Secondary outcomes included analgesic cost. -/- Results: 14 studies met the review criteria. We found that LB and ROPI are equivalent in managing postoperative pain. 8 of the 14 trials reported equal efficacy between LB and ROPI as determined by OME post-procedure and 10 of the 14 trials reported similar LOS after surgery. These findings remained consistent across multiple surgical procedures and multiple drug administrative modalities. -/- Conclusion: Our systematic review found that LB was not superior to ROPI in reducing postoperative OME use and hospital LOS. The only consistent finding was the significantly increased cost of LB compared to that of ROPI. Therefore, the use of LB over ROPI cannot be justified. (shrink)

An assessment of the extent of the use of electronic platforms by African academic staff in universities to disseminate research was done in this study. The study is informed by the growing importance of online repositories and preprint servers in the scientific communication of scholarly output, especially in an era where the use of metrics for research appraisals and funding decisions is commonly practised. The quantitative research method was adopted, based on the descriptive survey research design. The snowball sampling technique (...) was used for data collection. Data were collected from 1,977 respondents, distributed across 24 African countries, through the use of an electronic survey. There was a high rate of willingness among universities’ academic staff in Africa, to adopt various online platforms for research dissemination; ResearchGate is currently utilized the most for research dissemination, but Google Scholar is the platform respondents are more willing to adopt for research dissemination; the rate at which academic staff research output can be found online as a ratio of their total publication is 64.04% and in the ratio of 2.00:3.12; poor access to Internet facilities at home and workplaces are the major challenges academic staff face in the utilization of digital platforms for RD. It was recommended, amongst others that academic staff in universities should endeavour to explore and utilize at least ten of the online platforms mentioned in this study, to enable them disseminate their scholarly works to a wider audience and for increased visibility Keywords:. (shrink)

Background: Postoperative pneumonia is a preventable complication associated with adverse outcomes, that greatly aggravates the medical expenses of patients. The goal of our study is to identify risk factors and outcomes of postoperative pneumonia.

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, adolescents have increasingly suffered from online problem behaviors and mental disorders. But little research has paid attention to the protective factors among adolescents. Therefore, the present study attempted to investigate the role of positive youth development (PYD) attributes in adolescents’ depression, internet gaming disorder (IGD) and cyberbullying/victimization (CBV). -/- Methods: A total of 995 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 15.97 years, SD = 0.77, 325 boys) from two public high schools in Hubei province were recruited to (...) participate in the three-wave longitudinal study over the span of 1 year during the pandemic (Time 1: November, 2020; Time 2: May, 2021; Time 3: November, 2021). -/- Results: T1 PYD attributes negatively predicted T2 depression and T3 online problematic behaviors. T2 depression positively predicted IGD at T3. T3 IGD significantly predicted greater involvement in T3 CBV, and vice versa. Moreover, depression and one online problem behavior mediated the relationships between PYD attributes and the other online problem behavior, separately and sequentially. (shrink)

A medical intervention is a medical procedure or application intended to relieve or prevent illness or injury. Examples of medical interventions include vaccination and drug administration. After a medical intervention, adverse events (AEs) may occur which lie outside the intended consequences of the intervention. The representation and analysis of AEs are critical to the improvement of public health. Description: The Ontology of Adverse Events (OAE), previously named Adverse Event Ontology (AEO), is a community-driven ontology developed to standardize and integrate data (...) relating to AEs arising subsequent to medical interventions, as well as to support computer-assisted reasoning. OAE has over 3,000 terms with unique identifiers, including terms imported from existing ontologies and more than 1,800 OAE-specific terms. In OAE, the term ‘adverse event’ denotes a pathological bodily process in a patient that occurs after a medical intervention. Causal adverse events are defined by OAE as those events that are causal consequences of a medical intervention. OAE represents various adverse events based on patient anatomic regions and clinical outcomes, including symptoms, signs, and abnormal processes. OAE has been used in the analysis of several different sorts of vaccine and drug adverse event data. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate the predictive relationship of peer group influence, teacher-student interaction and indiscipline to students' dropout tendency in evening continuing education programmes. The context of this study is the southern senatorial district of Cross River State, Nigeria. The study adopted a predictive correlational research design, and the sample comprised 554 students randomly selected from 11 centres in the district. This represents 20% of the total population of students. The instrument used for data collection was (...) a questionnaire titled: "Social Indicators and Dropout Tendency Scale" (SIDTS). The researchers collected the data that were analysed using Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple linear regression analyses at the .05 level of significance. The results revealed that peer group influence, teacher-student interaction and level of indiscipline collectively and individually predicted dropout tendency among students in evening continuing education programmes. It was recommended, among others, that the teachers discover diverse ways of making their teaching process lively by devising ways of engaging the students in the learning process by forming discussion groups that will promote healthy peer groups, which will increase their eagerness to come to school. (shrink)

Objectives: The growing rate of retraction of scientific publications has attracted much attention within the academic community, but there is little knowledge about the nature of such retractions in schizophrenia-related research. This study aimed to analyze the characteristics of retractions of schizophrenia-related publications.

The notion of affective memory was first introduced by Théodule Ribot (1894), giving rise to a debate about its existence at the beginning of the 20th century. Although Vernon Lee did not directly take part in this discussion, she conceptualized this notion in a quite precise way, mainly in her book Music and Its Lovers (1932), clarifying the sometimes obscure formulations made by previous authors. In this short encyclopedic entry, I present Lee's characterization of affective memory.

The relationship between music and memory is mainly developed in Music and Its Lovers (1932), a book where Lee presents interesting psychological and philosophical insights from the analysis of the responses made by 150 people to a questionnaire about the “expressive and emotional powers of music”. In this short encyclopedic entry, I present Lee's analysis of the many different ways in which musical experience depends on memory.

This article compares the use of Romantic metaphor with the Chinese literary device xiang 象 (which I translate as “thing-metaphor”) in regard to how they embody different metaphysical relations between humans and things. Whereas Romantic metaphor transports a physical thing to the immaterial realm of imagination, xiang is a literary device in which the material qualities of the thing, while creatively interpreted to generate human meaning, retain ontologically a strong physical presence. Xiang therefore epitomizes a theory of (...) creation that challenges the Western dualistic paradigm: that the poet creates not virtual copies of the thing, but meanings of the thing, and therefore our relationships with things. The article concludes with Heidegger’s discourses on metaphor to suggest that my discussion of thing-metaphor has universal applicability. (shrink)

The question of ontological foundation has undergone a noteworthy revival in recent years: metaphysicians today quarrel about how exactly to understand the asymmetrical and hyperintensional relationship of grounding. One of the reasons for this revival is that the old quantificationalist meta-ontology inherited from Quine has been effectively criticised by leading philosophers favourable to a meta-ontology, the aim of which is to come to know “which facts/items ground (constitute the base of) which other facts/items”, thus to examine the relation of ontological (...) dependence between beings (e.g. chemical properties depend on physical properties, the economic situation on the behaviour of individuals etc.), i.e. to explore the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall not discuss here the relationship of grounding in itself, but make some historical-formal remarks on the properties of the ultimate ontological foundational item itself and its aporetic nature. To do so I explore various more or less exotic philosophical ecosystems in the following order: Heidegger (Seyn), Plato (ἕν), Wáng Bi (道, dào). On the way I shall propose a new interpretation both of certain hypotheses in the Parmenides and of the nature of the opposition between Wáng Bì and Guō Xiàng in regard to the logical grammar of the expression “nothing (無, wú)” (transl. J. Dudley). (shrink)

War as intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or para groups, such as mercenaries, insurgents, etc is not old fashion but continues to be the vibrant and violet of society (ies). Many literatures relating to the war, Just war and just war theories pay attention mainly at the conflicts as a main cause of war but pass by about the cause of conflicts leading to the war. The objective of this paper is thus, to assess sources of conflicts (...) leading to the war, and come up with recommendation to narrow situations provoking conflicts leading to the war. Research approach employed was qualitative to qualify ideas and opinions of scholars, who conducted researches on war, just war and just war theories; books, journals and internet sources dedicated to the cause and consequences of war and sources concerned with the Jus Ad Bellum, Jus in Bello and Jus post Bellum have been reviewed. It was found that ambitions of humans to realize their unlimited natural rights, such as economic rights, political rights and extreme desire to un equitable utilization of such rights cause a war of “all against all”. The study recommends that authority better to avoid or reduce extent of conflict among humans, and humans to learn limit their unlimited natural rights for the sake of peace and security of the business. Key words: war, Just war theories, Jus Ad Bellum, Jus in Bello, Jus post bellum. -/- . (shrink)

Boundary colors are observed when light from a scene is dispersed by a prism or diffraction grating. We discovered that patterns with repeating black and white stripes can produce repeating bands of boundary colors with two hues. These hues are virtually constant as measured by chromaticity or CIELAB. We found seven cases of this kind using a new appearance model for boundary colors. The model correctly predicts that green and magenta bands recur as stripe widths and dispersion strength vary. The (...) first green/magenta case in the sequence traces out an accurate ellipse in XYZ color space. Green and magenta bands are prominent in supernumerary rainbows and interference rings, and we explain why that might be the case. The explanation is based on an interesting property of the visible spectrum. In addition to the green/magenta cases, the other cases are orange/cyan, yellowish-green/purple, and yellow/violet. The success of the boundary color appearance model implies that bands are perceived as if the wavelength responses of the cones were essentially independent, which contradicts the actual behavior of cones. (shrink)

This chapter presents an analysis of Wang Bi’s (226-249 CE) hermeneutics and reception theory via the concept of “forgetting” (wang 忘) in his essay “Clarifying the Images” (Ming xiang 明象).

Although few linguists currently embrace the empirical paradigm, there are increasing calls for the development of tools for studying language that resemble those in exact sciences. This trend can be observed even in top mainstream linguistic journals, such as the Journal of Pragmatics, as exemplified by Xiang (2017). Today, however, linguists who adapt the methodologies from more advanced sciences face isolation from the mainstream linguistic community. This is because the majority of linguists in philological and philosophical departments remain convinced (...) that the object of their studies is fundamentally different from those studied by physicists. Therefore, they argue that linguistic methodology cannot resemble that used in empirical sciences. As a result, linguistics is often seen as requiring interpretation rather than an explanation, and evaluation of linguistic research is based on acceptance within the scholarly community rather than empirical testing. (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief introduction to Xuanxue Wei Jin Dynasty philosophy.