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Abstract For maritime navigation in the Arctic, sea ice charts are an essential tool, which still to this day is drawn manually by professional ice analysts. The total Sea Ice Concentration (SIC) is the primary descriptor of the charts and indicates the fraction of ice in an ocean surface area. Naturally, automating the SIC chart creation is desired. However, the optimal representation of the corresponding machine-learning task is ambivalent and discussed in the community. In this study, we explore the representation with either regressional or classification objectives, each with two different (weighted) loss functions: Mean Square Error and Binary Cross-Entropy, and Categorical Cross-Entropy and the Earth Mover’s Distance, respectively. While all models achieve good results they differ as the regression-based models obtain the highest numerical similarity to the reference charts, whereas the classification-optimised models generate results more visually pleasing and consistent. Rescaling the loss functions with inverse class weights improves the performance for intermediate classes at the expense of open water and fully-covered sea ice areas.

A growing body of literature uses the concept of core components to better understand small-scale programmatic interventions. Instead of interventions being viewed as unitary "black boxes," interventions are viewed as configurations of core components, which are the parts of interventions that carry their causal potential and therefore need to be reproduced with fidelity to produce the intended effect. To date, the concept of core components has not been as widely applied to public health policy interventions as it has to programmatic interventions. The purpose of this topical review is to familiarize public health practitioners and policy makers with the concept of core components as applied to public health policy interventions. Raising the profile of core component thinking can foster mindful adaptation and implementation of public health policy interventions while encouraging further research to enhance the supporting evidence base. We present 3 types of multilevel interactions in which the core components of a public health policy intervention produce effects at the population level by (1) seeking to directly affect individual behavior, (2) facilitating adoption of programmatic interventions by intermediaries, and (3) encouraging intermediaries to take action that can shape changes in upstream drivers of population health. Changing the unit of analysis from whole policies to core components can provide a basis for understanding how policies work and for facilitating novel evidence-generating strategies and rapid evidence reviews that can inform future adaptation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Table of Contents I. Introduction 541 II. International Law and Precedent 544 A. Precedent 545 1. Judicial Technique 545 2. The International Judicial Technique of Precedent 547 B. The Tension [...], Precedent is celebrated as a fundamental feature of dense legal systems as it creates predictability, builds coherence, and enhances the authority of courts and tribunals. But, in international adjudication, precedent can also affect interstate cooperation and ultimately the legitimacy of international organizations. Wary of clashing with state interests, most international dispute settlement systems are designed so that rulings do not set obligatory precedent. This Article describes the role of precedent in the Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to explain how precedent can affect compliance with the decisions of international courts and tribunals (ICs). This Article makes two main contributions. First, it shows that there can be precedent without a formal stare decisis rule. In theory the AB has a rule against binding precedent. Based on empirical evidence, however, this Article shows that the AB has in fact a strong norm of relying on prior decisions. Second, it shows that over time, the widening of legal commitments can result from extending precedent to new situations and this has an impact on the ability or willingness of states to comply. These findings have implications for the WTO and beyond. For the WTO, efforts to better define the value of precedent are unlikely to resolve the general mistrust of the AB and, therefore, this Article proposes other solutions to control the drift resulting from precedent. Beyond the WTO, international scholars should account for the intertemporal dimension of legal commitments in analyzing and explaining compliance with international law.

In the article, Gorliński-Kucik describes the determinants of science fiction conventions which aim at investigatiing the future of man and civilization. In doing so, the author reflects on movies released in recent years (2013–2019), which, in his opinion, best exemplify the problem in question, i.e. the construal of transhumanism. Analysed films include: Her (2013), Under the Skin (2013), Lucy (2014), Transcendence (2014), Chappie (2015), Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Ghost in the Shell (2017), Alita: Battle Angel (2019), and Netflix animated anthology Love, Death & Robots (2019). Gorliński-Kucik concludes that vast majority of interpreted movies addressess the post-human and predicts its appearance in the near future―without, however, fully escaping the eponymoys dichotomy of hope and paranoia.

It remains unknown what causes inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including signaling networks perpetuating chronic gastrointestinal inflammation in Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), in humans. According to an analysis of up to 500 patients with IBD and 100 controls, we report that key transcripts of the IL-7 receptor (IL-7R) pathway are accumulated in inflamed colon tissues of severe CD and UC patients not responding to either immunosuppressive/corticosteroid, anti- TNF, or anti-[[alpha].sub.4][[beta].sub.7] therapies. High expression of both IL7R and IL-7R signaling signature in the colon before treatment is strongly associated with nonresponsiveness to anti-TNF therapy. While in mice IL-7 is known to play a role in systemic inflammation, we found that in humans IL-7 also controlled [[alpha].sub.4][[beta].sub.7] integrin expression and imprinted gut-homing specificity on T cells. IL-7R blockade reduced human T cell homing to the gut and colonic inflammation in vivo in humanized mouse models, and altered effector T cells in colon explants from UC patients grown ex vivo. Our findings show that failure of current treatments for CD and UC is strongly associated with an overexpressed IL-7R signaling pathway and point to IL-7R as a relevant therapeutic target and potential biomarker to fill an unmet need in clinical IBD detection and treatment., Introduction Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) consists of 2 major forms, ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), which are chronic relapsing gastrointestinal disorders characterized by chronic intestinal inflammation, dysregulated immune [...]

Teodor Parnicki’s laconic diaries from the 1980s are filled with notes about the progress of his writing and disease, yet conceal much more than would be immediately evident. By considering what the author did not write, a very interesting picture of the final decade of communist Poland emerges. Reflection on the text, its rhythm and the construction of notes, reveals a narrative shaped by malady and senility. With the author’s decline during his final years, the schema of notes and their subject become characterized by a certain arrhythmia. These are the symptoms of the disintegrating narrative of the dying text/body.

The review undertakes Listy do Konstantego Symonolewicza z lat 1928-1949 (Letters to Konstanty Symonolewicz from the Years 1928-1949) (2021) and briefly describes the state of research in Teodor Parnicki's work as well as selected threads of the comprehensive (over 160 items) collection. The threads predominantly refer to the writer's biography, the relation with mentor and teacher Konstanty Symonolewicz, alongside of the intellectual ambience of prewar Lvov and literary life politicality. The reviewer stresses how brilliantly Parnicki and Symonolewicz's correspondence was prepared. Tomasz Markiewka in his comprehensive commentaries patiently explicates the complex and wide linguistic, literary, biographical, historical, and cultural contexts. The volume is viewed as a seminal and principally the ultimate item in the non-literary cycle of Parnicki's publication. It is a valuable source of knowledge on the writer and on the influence of biography on literature (key issue for the author of Słowo i ciało) as well as on the cultural life of prewar Lvov. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]