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Retrograde ejaculation (RE) is a condition defined as the backward flow of the semen during ejaculation, and when present can result in male infertility. RE may be partial or complete, resulting in either low seminal volume or complete absence of the ejaculate (dry ejaculate). RE can result from anatomic, neurological or pharmacological conditions. The treatment approaches outlined are determined by the cause. Alkalinizing urinary pH with oral medications or by adding sperm wash media into the bladder prior to ejaculation may preserve the viability of the sperm. This article provides a step-by-step guide to diagnose RE and the optimal techniques to retrieve sperm. Copyright © 2021 Korean Society for Sexual Medicine and Andrology

Final Report of the European Project MIROR-Musical Interaction Relying On reflexion, FP7, G.A. 258338

This paper reports on datamining of Cretan folk songs for distinctive patterns. A pattern is distinctive if it occurs with higher probability in a corpus as compared to an anticorpus. A small set of transcribed Cretan folk songs was encoded, organized using a knowledge base of classes, and mined using distinctive pattern discovery methods. In this exploratory study several highly distinctive melodic patterns emerge, indicating the ability of distinctive patterns to describe subgroups of folk songs. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

This paper discusses a mathematical model together with its computational realization, for the motivic analysis of a piece of music. Relations between the mathematical model (motivic topologies), computational counter-part (OM-Melos), and music analysis are presented in the light of general concepts of computational music analysis, stressing the importance of neutrality and scientific rigour in the modelling part, while preserving the freedom of the analyst. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

The objective of this study was to explore the ability of 3 regional climate models (RCMs), CNRM-Aladin, C4I-RCA3 and KNMI-RACMO along with their parental global climate models (GCMs), ARPEGE and ECHAM5, to represent the relationship between large-scale atmospheric circulation and climate extremes in the Mediterranean region. Subsequently, an evaluation and inter-comparison of these 3 RCM/GCM couples for the present climate was performed. For this purpose, the Regularised Canonical Correlation Analysis (RCCA) was employed and 4 extreme climate indices of temperature and precipitation were used to define extreme events over the study region. The evaluation of these relationships was carried out against gridded observational and reanalysis datasets. It was found that the observed upper air large scale patterns related to climate extremes in the Mediterranean are not very well reproduced by the RCM/GCM couples in all seasons. In addition, in many cases, the coupled models display patterns of extreme climate indices which are not consistent with the accompanied upper level circulation. Furthermore, all coupled models display substantial deficiencies in simulating precipitation extremes. In the case of summer data, the ability of all 3 models is limited, possibly because the strength of the large-scale atmospheric flow decreases, the control exerted by the lateral boundary conditions is weaker, and the nested models are mainly governed by local processes. © Inter-Research 2011.

This special issue of the Journal of Mathematics and Music addresses the topic of computational music analysis. It arose from a series of two international workshops on the topic, one in Berlin and one in Paris, both of which created interesting discussions and debates. In the call for papers, this special issue welcomed previously unpublished contributions that presented computational approaches of any type of music analysis. As a special focus, all papers were asked to analyse the same piece: the first movement of Brahms' String Quartet No. 1. The aim was to bring together diverse computational analytical approaches and methodologies, such as structural, motivic, semiotic, comparative, reductional, harmonic, transformational, and others, using a variety of computational implementation techniques. By focusing on to the same piece, similarities, differences, and complementarities among the approaches on both the methodological and the analytical results levels could be more easily observed. Authors were particularly encouraged to consider Forte's [1] and Huron's [2] analyses of the string quartet, and relate them to their own work if possible. Three papers were chosen for publication, which reflect the various aspects and levels of computation involved. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

We compare four computational approaches of melodic analysis according to diverse approach aspects: input type (monophonic or polyphonic), pattern identification type (strict or similar), analysis segmentation, aim of approach, motivic pattern representation, and type of result representations. The considered four computational approaches are the following: a similarity neighbourhood approach by Adiloglu (Adiloglu and Obermayer 2006a, b), a multiple viewpoint representation and discovery approach by Anagnostopoulou (Anagnostopoulou, Share and Conklin 2006), a topological approach by Buteau (2005), and an approach based on multidimensional closed pattern mining by Lartillot (Lartillot and Toiviainen 2007). © 2009 Springer-Verlag.

Significant changes in the regional climate of coastal and island stations in and bordering the Aegean during 1961-2002 are identified. Here we start with a very large number of parameters describing the surface temperature climate measured at 9 Greek island and coastal stations, and highlight those parameters which show regionally significant trends. Statistical significance of trends is assessed over multiple sliding time-windows of data. For each parameter and each time-window, a regional summary is produced using two quantities: the statistical significance of the trend in the regionally averaged parameter, and the number of stations which individually show significant trends in that parameter. The relationship between these two quantities provides a simple way of highlighting those climate parameters for which the region shows a trend, which is spatially relatively homogeneous, and those for which the region may need to be divided into sub-regions. Some very detailed characteristics of trends in daily surface temperatures are summarized in a concise way. Notably, the established cooling during the 1960s is shown to be especially strong for November and also December. Some trends were also shown to be significant only in terms of temperatures of unseasonably warm or cool days. For example, cooling in May temperatures in the late 70s/early 80s occurred most clearly for the low-temperature range-appearing as a decrease in the temperature reached by unseasonably cold days. This behaviour was inhomogeneous across the region, with significant cooling at only a subset of the stations. Such results could be used by subsequent analysis to focus on particular parts of the data, rather than using averaging to reduce the data. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society.

In this paper we describe a new method for discovering recurrent patterns in a corpus of segmented melodies. Elements of patterns in this scheme do not represent individual notes but rather represent melodic segments that are sequences of notes. A new knowledge representation for segmental patterns is designed, and a pattern discovery algorithm based on suffix trees is used to discover segmental patterns in large corpora. The method is applied to a large collection of melodies, including Nova Scotia folk songs, Bach chorale melodies, and sections from the Essen folk song database. Patterns are ranked using a statistical significance method that integrates pattern self-overlap, length, and frequency in a corpus into a single measure. A musical interpretation of some of the statistically significant discovered patterns is presented. © 2006 INFORMS.

An attempt is made to examine the relationship of the surface circulation prevailing over Europe with the corresponding surface and 500 hPa over Greece by correlating Lamb weather types for western Europe and Hess and Brezowsky (HB) types for central Europe with those derived from a new classification scheme for the Greek area. It was found that it was difficult to formulate rules controlling the frequency distributions of the circulation types over the Greek area in relation to the circulation over western and central Europe. However, statistically significant correlation was found between certain types with high frequency, which is greater between Lamb and HB types with the surface circulation types over the Greek area, compared with 500 hPa circulation types. For the most correlated pairs, seasonal composites of mean sea-level pressure and 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies demonstrated that the formation of the circulation types over the Greek area depends on the extent, intensity of the anticyclonic or cyclonic centres, air mass characteristics, and stability profile in the lower troposphere over the regions examined, but especially over the central and eastern Mediterranean. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society.

An attempt is made to examine rainfall variability over the Greek area in relation to 500 hPa atmospheric circulation. Daily precipitation series from 22 evenly distributed Greek stations have been used for the period 1958-2000, along with the classification scheme of daily circulation types at 500 hPa for the same period. The seasonal frequency and the trends of circulation types have been calculated. It was found that there is a general positive trend of anticyclonic circulation types and a negative one for cyclonic types. The seasonal trends of rainy days and the precipitation totals have also been calculated and analysed. A general decreasing tendency of winter rainfall is observed; the decreasing trend during autumn and spring is less significant. Concerning the frequency and intensity of rainfall per circulation type, a decreasing tendency becomes evident for the majority of the stations during winter, whereas there is an increasing tendency during autumn. A multiple regression-cross-validation model was developed using the seasonal frequency of circulation types as predictors and the seasonal rainfall totals as predictants. Only the winter modelled precipitation shows a good agreement with the observed precipitation, whereas for the other seasons the agreement is relatively poor. This could be caused by the influence of different factors that are not captured by the classification scheme used. The proposed model could serve as a circulation-based downscaling method that could be further applied to geopotential data available from general circulation models in order to study regional climatological consequences of future climate scenarios. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society.