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This article deals with the development of artistic and imaginative thinking, imagination and the creation of an artistic image in fine arts lessons using a graphic image. An example of a lesson for elementary school students on creating a mysterious tree image is given, which will help the teacher develop the ability of his students to see and creatively realize their ideas.

Li-Heng Tsai,1,2 Cheng-Yu Chien,1– 3 Chen-Bin Chen,1,2,4 Chung-Hsien Chaou,1,2 Chip-Jin Ng,1,2 Mei-Yi Lo,5 Chen-Ken Seak,6 Joanna Chen-Yeen Seak,6 Zhong Ning Leonard Goh,6 Chen-June Seak1,2,4,7 1Department of Emergency Medicine, Lin-Kou Medical Center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 2College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 3Department of Emergency Medicine, Ton-Yen General Hospital, Zhubei, Taiwan; 4Department of Emergency Medicine, New Taipei Municipal Tucheng Hospital, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 5Department of Nursing, Lin-Kou Medical Center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 6Sarawak General Hospital, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia; 7Center for Quality Management, New Taipei Municipal Tucheng Hospital, New Taipei City, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chen-June SeakDepartment of Emergency Medicine, Lin-Kou Medical Center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, No. 5, Fusing St., Guei-Shan Township, Taoyuan County 333, TaiwanTel +886-3-3281200 ext. 5235Fax +886-3-3287715Email julianseak@hotmail.comPurpose: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an emerging contagious pathogen that has caused community and nosocomial infections in many countries. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on emergency services of the largest medical center in Taiwan by comparing emergency department (ED) usage, turnover, and admission rates before the COVID-19 outbreak with those during the outbreak.Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in the ED of the largest tertiary medical center in Taiwan. Trends of adult, non-trauma patients who visited the ED during February–April 2019 were compared with those during February–April 2020. The number of visits, their dispositions, crowding parameters, and turnover rates were analyzed. The primary outcome was the change in ED attendance between the two periods. The secondary outcomes were changes in hospital admission rates, crowding parameters, and turnover rates.Results: During the outbreak, there were decreased non-trauma ED visits by 33.45% (p < 0.001) and proportion of Taiwan Triage and Acuity Scale (TTAS) 3 patients (p=0.02), with increased admission rates by 4.7% (p < 0.001). Crowding parameters and turnover rate showed significant improvements.Conclusion: Comparison of periods before and during the COVID-19 outbreak showed an obvious decline in adult, non-trauma ED visits. The reduction in TTAS 3 patient visits and the increased hospital admission rates provide references for future public-health policy-making to optimise emergency medical resource allocations globally.Keywords: emergency department, Coronavirus disease 2019, Taiwan Triage and Acuity Scale, Stratification to Prevent Overcrowding Taskforce, SPOT

The accessibility of basic services in rural settlements in the South Moravian Region was evaluated, the accessibility by public transport was taken into account because the accessibility by individual car transport does not manifest any problems. The accessibility was calculated for 768 rural settlements, defined as spatially separate places which do not belong to municipalities with extended power. The time distance includes the time of the ride plus 8 min walking distance to and from the stop. The data was taken from the Integrated Transport System of the South Moravian Region, which ensures that each populated place in the region has to be connected by public transport at least six times on working days. The results show that for 99.8% of the inhabitants of the region, central places equipped with a post office, a basic school and a general practitioner’s office are accessible in a shorter time than 30 min. The accessibility of the services depends primarily on the characteristics of the settlement system and the physical conditions of the transport. In lowland areas, the share of settlements with comfortable accessibility is expressively higher than that of the highland and peripheral territories. The possible future improvement consists of the digitization of the services.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a non-persistent chemical with endocrine disrupting abilities widely used in a variety of consumer products. The fetal brain is particularly sensitive to chemical exposures due to its rapid growth and complexity. Some studies have reported associationbetween maternal BPA exposure and behavior but few have assessed impact on cognitive development, and to our knowledge no studies have specifically assessed the impact on language development. We therefore assessed whether maternal urinary BPA concentration during pregnancy was associated with language development and attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in offspring aged 18–36 months in the prospective Odense Child Cohort. BPA was analyzed in 3rd trimester maternal fasting urine spot samples. Language development was addressed among 535 children using the Danish adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories at median age 21 months; ADHD traits were assessed by parents of 658 children using the Child Behavior Checklist for ages 1½-5 years at mean age 2.7 years. Associations were assessed using logistic regression models comparing children below the 15th percentile score for language and above the 85 percentiles score for ADHD with the other children while stratifying by sex and adjusting for maternal education, duration of breastfeeding and maternal urine phthalates. BPA was detected in 85.3% of the urine samples (median 1.2 ng/ml). Boys of mothers with BPA exposure in the highest tertile had an odds ratio of 3.70 (95% CI 1.34–10.21) of being in the lowest 15th percentile of vocabulary score compared to boys of mothers within the lowest tertile of BPA exposure after adjustment, whereas no association was found in girls. No clear dose-response relationship between maternal BPA and ADHD scores above the 85th percentile was found for either sex. Since early language development is a predictor of future reading skills and educational success, more epidemiological studies assessing BPA exposure and language skills are needed to confirm our findings.

This paper explores the effectiveness of Whole Milk Powder futures to protect the net profit margins of New Zealand dairy farms. The proposed strategy for farms suggests selling futures contracts when the current futures price (adjusted for basis risk and commissions) is above the break-even price. We use historical data from 2011 to 2017 and simulate a profit margin hedging strategy with a target price that covers total cash expenses of a representative farm. We find that the representative farm’s payout for this strategy is statistically higher than the continuous hedging and no hedging strategies after accounting for brokerage fees and basis risk. Additionally, we apply the strategy using actual farm-level data and demonstrate that the strategy helps to reduce discretionary cash variance by 35%, semi-variance (downside risk) by 76% and decreases chances of financial distress by 16%. Moreover, we document that the strategy increases mean discretionary cash for farms by 39% and that farms with a high level of leverage experience the biggest improvement. We estimate that if the strategy was adopted by all New Zealand dairy farms over the five year period, it could have generated an additional income of NZD 0.53 billion yearly, on average.

Firms that trade a commodity that has a random price can reduce risk by trading forward. In “Forward Commodity Trading with Private Information,” Edward J. Anderson and Andrew B. Philpott consider a setting in which a buyer and a seller of a divisible commodity have different private information on the probability distribution of its future price. This situation arises in electricity pool markets where contracts for differences are traded by buyers and sellers of electricity to hedge future price risk. The paper compares several mechanisms for settling the price and quantity of such a contract when buyers and sellers have private information. These include Nash bargaining and supply- function equilibrium models. In the latter setting, a player can deduce the other player’s private information from its offered supply function and use this to improve its own supply function. Examples are given to show that this strategy, when used by both firms, may make both firms worse off in equilibrium.

This study measures the connectedness of natural gas and electricity spot returns to their futures returns with different maturities. We employ the Henry Hub and the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (PJM) Western Hub Peak as the natural gas price indicator and the wholesale electricity price indicator, respectively. We also use each commodity’s spot prices and 12 types of futures prices with one to twelve months maturities and realize results in fourfold. First, we observe mutual spillover effects between natural gas futures returns and learn that the natural gas futures market is integrated. Second, we observe the spillover effects from natural gas futures returns to natural gas spot returns (however, the same is not evident for natural gas spot returns to natural gas futures returns). We find that futures markets have better natural gas price discovery capabilities than spot markets. Third, we observe the spillover effects from natural gas spot returns to electricity spot returns, and the spillover effects from natural gas futures returns to electricity futures returns. We learn that the marginal cost of power generation (natural gas prices) is passed through to electricity prices. Finally, we do not observe any spillover effects amongst electricity futures returns, except for some combinations, and learn that the electricity futures market is not integrated.

High efficiency and precision of the pot center detection are the foundations of avionics instrument navigation and optics measurement basis for many applications. It has noticeable impact on overall system performance. Among them, laser spot detection is very important in the optical measurement technology. In order to improve the low accuracy of the spot center position, the algorithm is improved on the basis of the circle fitting. The pretreatment is used by circle fitting, and the improved adaptive denoising filter for TV repair technology can effectively improves the accuracy of the spot center position. At the same time, the pretreatment and de-noising can effectively reduce the influence of Gaussian white noise, which enhances the anti-jamming capability.

[EN]For security and justice professionals (e.g., police officers, lawyers, judges), the thousands of peer-reviewed articles on nonverbal communication represent important sources of knowledge. However, despite the scope of the scientific work carried out on this subject, professionals can turn to programs, methods, and approaches that fail to reflect the state of science. The objective of this article is to examine (i) concepts of nonverbal communication conveyed by these programs, methods, and approaches, but also (ii) the consequences of their use (e.g., on the life or liberty of individuals). To achieve this objective, we describe the scope of scientific research on nonverbal communication. A program (SPOT; Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques), a method (the BAI; Behavior Analysis Interview) and an approach (synergology) that each run counter to the state of science are examined. Finally, we outline five hypotheses to explain why some organizations in the fields of security and justice are turning to pseudoscience and pseudoscientific techniques. We conclude the article by inviting these organizations to work with the international community of scholars who have scientific expertise in nonverbal communication and lie (and truth) detection to implement evidence-based practices., [ES]Para los profesionales de la seguridad y la justicia (policías, abogados, jueces), los miles de artículos revisados por pares sobre comunicación no verbal representan fuentes importantes de conocimiento. Sin embargo, a pesar del alcance del trabajo científico realizado sobre este tema, los profesionales pueden recurrir a programas, métodos y enfoques que no reflejan el estado real de la ciencia. El objetivo de este artículo es examinar (i) los conceptos de comunicación no verbal transmitidos por estos programas, métodos y enfoques, pero también (ii) las consecuencias de su uso (por ejemplo, sobre la vida o la libertad de las personas). Para lograr estos objetivos, describimos el alcance de la investigación científica sobre la comunicación no verbal. Se examina un programa (SPOT: Evaluación de pasajeros mediante técnicas de observación), un método (BAI: Entrevista de análisis de conducta) y un enfoque (sinergología) que contradicen el estado de la ciencia. Finalmente, presentamos cinco hipótesis para explicar por qué algunas organizaciones en los campos de la seguridad y la justicia están recurriendo a la pseudociencia y a las técnicas pseudocientíficas. Concluimos el artículo invitando a estas organizaciones a trabajar con la comunidad académica internacional especializada en la investigación sobre comunicación no verbal y detección de mentiras (y verdad) para implementar prácticas basadas en la evidencia.

Nodding syndrome is a highly debilitating, generalized seizure disorder, affecting children in subregions of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite numerous efforts to uncover the etiology, the exact cause of this syndrome still remains obscure. Therefore, to date, patients only receive symptomatic care, including the administration of first-generation antiepileptic drugs for seizure control. As data on the efficacy of drugs within this population are completely lacking, the aim of this study was to explore how therapeutic drug monitoring could help to understand the differential response to therapy. Considering the challenging environment in which sampling had to be performed (remote areas, devoid of electricity, running water, etc), dried blood matrices [ie, dried blood spots (DBSs)] and volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) were considered fit-for-purpose. In addition, owing to the similarities between the syndrome and other forms of epilepsy, samples originating from patients suffering from (onchocerciasis-associated) epilepsy were included. In total, 68 patients with Nodding syndrome from Uganda, 58 Ugandan patients with epilepsy, and 137 patients with onchocerciasis-associated epilepsy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were included. VAMS samples and DBS were analyzed using validated methods, involving manual extraction or fully automated extraction, respectively, before quantification using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. Analysis revealed that serum concentrations (calculated from DBS) within the respective reference ranges were attained in only 52.9% of the 68 Nodding syndrome patients treated with valproic acid, in 21.4% of the 56 Ugandan epilepsy patients treated with carbamazepine, and in 65.7% of the 137 onchocerciasis-associated epilepsy patients from the Democratic Republic of the Congo treated with phenobarbital. In all other instances, concentrations were subtherapeutic. Furthermore, on comparing DBS with VAMS concentrations, an inexplicable overestimation was observed in the latter. Finally, no obvious link could be observed between the obtained drug concentrations and the number of seizures experienced during the last month before sampling, elaborating the fact that the level of improvement in some patients cannot simply be linked to reaching therapeutic concentrations.

After a large-scale disaster, many damaged buildings are demolished and treated as disaster waste. Though the weight of disaster waste was estimated two months after the 2016 earthquake in Kumamoto, Japan, the estimated weight was significantly different from the result when the disaster waste disposal was completed in March 2018. The amount of disaster waste generated is able to be estimated by an equation by multiplying the total number of severely damaged and partially damaged buildings by the coefficient of generated weight per building. We suppose that the amount of disaster waste would be affected by the conditions of demolished buildings, namely, the areas and typologies of building structures, but this has not yet been clarified. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to use geographic information system (GIS) map data to create a time series GIS map dataset with labels of demolished and remaining buildings in Mashiki town for the two-year period prior to the completion of the disaster waste disposal. We used OpenStreetMap (OSM) data as the base data and time series SPOT images observed in the two years following the Kumamoto earthquake to label all demolished and remaining buildings in the GIS map dataset. To effectively label the approximately 16,000 buildings in Mashiki town, we calculated an indicator that shows the possibility of the buildings to be classified as the remaining and demolished buildings from a change of brightness in SPOT images. We classified 5701 demolished buildings from 16,106 buildings, as of March 2018, by visual interpretation of the SPOT and Pleiades images with reference to this indicator. We verified that the number of demolished buildings was almost the same as the number reported by Mashiki municipality. Moreover, we assessed the accuracy of our proposed method: The F-measure was higher than 0.9 using the training dataset, which was verified by a field survey and visual interpretation, and included the labels of the 55 demolished and 55 remaining buildings. We also assessed the accuracy of the proposed method by applying it to all the labels in the OSM dataset, but the F-measure was 0.579. If we applied test data including balanced labels of the other 100 demolished and 100 remaining buildings, which were other than the training data, the F-measure was 0.790 calculated from the SPOT image of 25 March 2018. Our proposed method performed better for the balanced classification but not for imbalanced classification. We studied the examples of image characteristics of correct and incorrect estimation by thresholding the indicator.

Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (NDA) derived dietary reference values (DRVs) for sodium. Evidence from balance studies on sodium and on the relationship between sodium intake and health outcomes, in particular cardiovascular disease (CVD)‐related endpoints and bone health, was reviewed. The data were not sufficient to enable an average requirement (AR) or population reference intake (PRI) to be derived. However, by integrating the available evidence and associated uncertainties, the Panel considers that a sodium intake of 2.0 g/day represents a level of sodium for which there is sufficient confidence in a reduced risk of CVD in the general adult population. In addition, a sodium intake of 2.0 g/day is likely to allow most of the general adult population to maintain sodium balance. Therefore, the Panel considers that 2.0 g sodium/day is a safe and adequate intake for the general EU population of adults. The same value applies to pregnant and lactating women. Sodium intakes that are considered safe and adequate for children are extrapolated from the value for adults, adjusting for their respective energy requirement and including a growth factor, and are as follows: 1.1 g/day for children aged 1–3 years, 1.3 g/day for children aged 4–6 years, 1.7 g/day for children aged 7–10 years and 2.0 g/day for children aged 11–17 years, respectively. For infants aged 7–11 months, an Adequate Intake (AI) of 0.2 g/day is proposed based on upwards extrapolation of the estimated sodium intake in exclusively breast‐fed infants aged 0–6 months., This publication is linked to the following EFSA Supporting Publications articles: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2019.EN-1679/full, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2017.e15121/full This publication is linked to the following EFSA Journal article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2019.5779/full

The main purpose of the paper is to analyze the conditional correlations, conditional covariances, and co-volatility spillovers between international crude oil and associated financial markets. The prices of oil and its interactions with financial markets make it possible to determine the associated prices of financial derivatives, such as carbon emission prices. The approach taken in the paper is different from others in the literature; the purpose is to examine the usefulness of modeling and testing volatility spillovers in the oil and financial markets. The paper investigates co-volatility spillovers (namely, the delayed effect of a returns shock in one physical or financial asset on the subsequent volatility or co-volatility in another physical or financial asset) between the oil and financial markets. The oil industry has four major regions, namely North Sea, the USA, Middle East, and South-East Asia. Associated with these regions are two major financial centers, namely the UK and the USA. For these reasons, the data to be used are the returns on alternative crude oil markets, returns on crude oil derivatives, specifically futures, and stock index returns in the UK and the USA. Given the importance of the Chinese financial and economic systems, the paper also analyzes Chinese financial markets, where the data are more recent. The USA and China are the world's two largest economies and the UK is the world's sixth largest economy (and second in the existing EU) behind the USA, China, Japan, Germany, and India. Moreover, the USA and the UK are associated with WTI and Brent oil, respectively. One of the purposes of the paper is to examine how China might be different from the USA and the UK, which seems to be borne out in the empirical analysis. Based on the conditional covariances to test the co-volatility spillovers, dynamic hedging strategies will be suggested to analyze market fluctuations in crude oil prices and associated financial markets.

Measurement of 24-h urine protein (UP) is the standard method for detection of proteinuria in preeclampsia (PE). A 24-h urine sampling is time-consuming, inconvenient, and delays the diagnosis of PE. A 29-year-old woman, previous cesarean section (CS), pregnant 37 weeks'+2 days, mild PE, and another 31-year-old woman, primipara, pregnant 34 weeks'+4 days, severe PE, were admitted for control of blood pressure and termination of pregnancy. Studied women were subjected to fetal well-being assessment, routine antenatal, and laboratory investigations to exclude chronic renal diseases, and for 24-h urine sampling. A spot mid-stream urine sample was obtained shortly before the 24-h urine sampling to measure the protein/creatinine (P/C) ratio. The first studied woman had normal serum creatinine and blood urea, 688 mg protein/24-h urine, 86 mg/dL spot UP, 178 mg/dL spot urine creatinine, and 0.48 P/C ratio. The second studied woman had also normal serum creatinine and blood urea, 1199 mg protein/24-h urine, 147 mg/dL spot UP, 133 mg/dL spot urine creatinine, and 1.11 spot P/C ratio. The spot urine sample was suggested by the National Kidney Foundation to detect and monitor proteinuria in adults. Moreover, the 24-h UP can be calculated from the following equation: 24-h UP in g = P/C ratio × 0.81 + 0.3 (Abdelazim equation) without 24-h urine sampling. This report suggests the use of Abdelazim equation (24-h UP in g = P/C ratio × 0.81 + 0.3) for detection of 24-h UP from spot urine sample in PE without 24-h urine sampling.

The main objective of this study is to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of land cover/land use changes in the lower Mekong Delta over the last 40 years with the coastal Tran Van Thoi District of Ca Mau Province, Vietnam as a case study. Land cover/land use change dynamics are derived from moderate to high spatial resolution (Landsat and SPOT) satellite imagery in six time intervals ranging from 1973 to 2011. Multi-temporal satellite images were collected, georeferenced, classified using per-pixel method, validated, and compared in post classification for the land use/land cover change detection in decades. Seven major land cover/land use classes were obtained, including cultivated lands, aquaculture ponds, mangrove forest, melaleuca forest, built up areas, bare lands, and natural water bodies. The accuracies of the land cover/land use maps for 1973, 1979, 1989, 1995, 2004, and 2011 were 81%, 82%, 86%, 87%, 89%, and 89%, respectively. The results show that the area of cultivated lands reduced over the period 1973–2011, however, it still represents the dominant land use in the case study. Aquaculture ponds were almost absent in 1973 but greatly increased from 1995 to 2004, to represent 20% of the land surface in 2011. Overall, from 1973 to 2011, bare lands, cultivated lands, mangrove forest, and melaleuca forest decreased by 104 km2, 77 km2, 61 km2, and 5 km2, respectively. In contrast, aquaculture lands and built up areas increased by 123 km2 and 120 km2, respectively. Temporal analysis highlights that these changes took place mostly between 1995 and 2004. This study is a first step to identify the main drivers of land use changes in this delta region, which include economical policies as well as demographic, socio-economic, and environmental changes.

Coleoid cephalopods (squid, octopus, and sepia) are renowned for their elaborate body patterning capabilities, which are employed for camouflage or communication. The specific chromatic appearance of a cephalopod, at any given moment, is a direct result of the combined action of their intradermal pigmented chromatophore organs and reflecting cells. Therefore, a lot can be learned about the cephalopod coloration system by video recording and analyzing the activation of individual chromatophores in time. The fact that adult cephalopods have small chromatophores, up to several hundred thousand in number, makes measurement and analysis over several seconds a difficult task. However, current advancements in videography enable high-resolution and high framerate recording, which can be used to record chromatophore activity in more detail and accuracy in both space and time domains. In turn, the additional pixel information and extra frames per video from such recordings result in large video files of several gigabytes, even when the recording spans only few minutes. We created a software plugin, "SpotMetrics," that can automatically analyze high resolution, high framerate video of chromatophore organ activation in time. This image analysis software can track hundreds of individual chromatophores over several hundred frames to provide measurements of size and color. This software may also be used to measure differences in chromatophore activation during different behaviors which will contribute to our understanding of the cephalopod sensorimotor integration system. In addition, this software can potentially be utilized to detect numbers of round objects and size changes in time, such as eye pupil size or number of bacteria in a sample. Thus, we are making this software plugin freely available as open-source because we believe it will be of benefit to other colleagues both in the cephalopod biology field and also within other disciplines.