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The article "Resurrection Morning" from Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought reflects on the author's experiences of distance from family, memories of childhood summers, and the emotional impact of loss and death, particularly the passing of the author's grandmother. The author contemplates the significance of family relationships, the passage of time, and the journey of life as they navigate the complexities of maintaining connections across physical and emotional distances. Through personal reflections and poignant anecdotes, the author explores themes of nostalgia, love, and the enduring bonds that tie families together across generations. [Extracted from the article]

This text is a summary of a document that provides insights into the experiences of Marie Litzinger, an American mathematics student, during her time studying in Rome in the early 1920s. The document highlights Litzinger's encounters with different social and cultural experiences, including attending a tea at a Jewish home and interacting with her classmates. It also mentions her observations of Italian cuisine. The document emphasizes the commonalities between Litzinger's experiences and those of other mathematicians studying in Italy at the time. [Extracted from the article]

The paper deals with an optimization of a magnetic circuit of the field exciter designed to control magnetorheological fluid (MRF) in a hybrid soft–rigid jaw gripper. The case discussed includes sealing of the MRF inside a cushion made of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The shear stress distributions in the MRF upon magnetic field excitation have been analyzed for various permanent magnet, yoke, and air gap dimensions. In the developed numerical model of the magnetic field exciter, the geometry of the considered domain was parameterized. As part of the simulation study, more than 4600 variants of the magnetic circuit were analyzed, for which the shear stress distribution in the MRF inside the cushion was determined. The numerical model has been implemented in the Ansys Electronics Desktop 2020 finite element method (FEM) package. Research was focused on finding dimensions of the magnetic circuit that ensure the desired distribution of the shear stress in the MRF inside the cushion. The undeformed and deformed by axial plunging of the pin cushions geometries have been analyzed. The evaluation criteria were the achievement of the highest possible value of the shear stress and the uniformity of its distribution in the given cross-sectional area of the MRF inside the cushion. The main objective of the analysis was to design the magnetic field exciter for application in the jaw pads of a gripper using MRF cushions. Through research, a suitable configuration tailored to the needs of the application was proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), magnifying display lenses typically introduce pincushion distortion and transverse chromatic aberration. These distortions are corrected by pre‐processing, one side‐effect of which is disruption of the spatial correlation between color channels. As a result, the standard practice of performing color space conversion prior to image compression may introduce undesirable, visible artefacts. To assess this, we evaluated the performance of two low impairment display stream codecs on distortion corrected stereoscopic images based on converting to YCoCg color space or bypassing the color conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic mechanisms controlling root development are well-understood in plant model species, and emerging frontier research is currently dissecting how some of these mechanisms control root development in cacti. Here we show the patterns of root architecture development in a gradient of divergent lineages, from populations to species in Mammillaria. First, we show the patterns of variation in natural variants of the species Mammillaria haageana. Then we compare this variation to closely related species within the Series Supertexta in Mammillaria (diverging for the last 2.1 million years) in which M. haageana is inserted. Finally, we compared these patterns of variation to what is found in a set of Mammillaria species belonging to different Series (diverging for the last 8 million years). When plants were grown in controlled environments, we found that the variation in root architecture observed at the intra-specific level, partially recapitulates the variation observed at the inter-specific level. These phenotypic outcomes at different evolutionary time-scales can be interpreted as macroevolution being the cumulative outcome of microevolutionary phenotypic divergence, such as the one observed in Mammillaria accessions and species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we introduce and explore Scintillating Starbursts, a stimulus type made up of concentric star polygons that induce illusory scintillating rays or beams. We test experimentally which factors, such as contrast and number of vertices, modulate how observers experience this stimulus class. We explain how the illusion arises from the interplay of known visual processes, specifically central versus peripheral vision, and interpret the phenomenology evoked by these patterns. We discuss how Starbursts differ from similar and related visual illusions such as illusory contours, grid illusions such as the pincushion grid illusion as well as moiré patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poem "Be Small" by Constance Hansen is presented. First Line: You can too pin down a wave; Last Line: to someone else's feet.

Aiming at the problem of scanning distortion in X–Y galvanometer light detecting and ranging (Lidar) scanning system, we propose a method of image scanning distortion correction with controllable driving voltage compensation. Firstly, the geometrical optics vectors model is established to explain the principle of pincushion distortion in the galvanometer scanning system, and the simulation result of scanning trajectory is consistent with experiments. The linear relationship between the driving voltage and the scanning angle of the galvanometer is verified. Secondly, the relationship between the deflection angle of the galvanometer and the scanning trajectory and the driving voltage is deduced respectively, and an image scanning correction algorithm with controllable driving voltage compensation is obtained. The simulation experiment results of the proposed method show that the root-mean-square error (RMSE) and the corresponding curve between the scan value and the actual value at different distances, have a good correction effect for the pincushion distortion. Finally, the X–Y galvanometer scanning Lidar system is established to obtain undistorted two-dimensional scanned image and it can be applied to the three-dimensional Lidar scanning system in the actual experiments, which further demonstrates the feasibility and practicability of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rationale: A 19-year-old female presented to the Otorhinolaryngology Department. Patient Concerns: Pain over the right side of the neck below the angle of the mandible following a fall on a pin cushion after a fight with her brother. She reported that the wound might have been caused by a sewing needle lodged in the pin cushion. Diagnosis: X-ray soft-tissue neck lateral view revealed a radiopaque linear shadow on the right side of the neck at the level of the C1-C2 vertebrae. On contrast-enhanced computed tomography, a linear (needle-like) foreign body at the level of C1-C2 was approximately 1.6 cm deep from the skin. The internal jugular vein seemed to be compressed between the needle and vertebrae. Treatment: Foreign body was explored and removed under general anaesthesia by an open lateral cervical approach. Outcomes: The patient's postoperative recovery was uneventful. Take-away Lesson: Due to early diagnosis, management, and a team of experienced surgeons, anaesthesiologists, and support staff, any morbidity or mortality was avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schwertmannite has been considered as the host mineral and potentially excellent adsorbent of contaminates from waters, and it has various morphologies of spheroid with pincushions, whiskers, hedge-hogs, and needles. In this work, using the (high-resolution transmission and field-emission scanning) electron microscopes, we studied nanostructure, morphological evolution, and difference in chemical composition for the produced schwertmannites in the cell-rich iron solutions. All analysis results showed within cellular 36-h reproduction period, the production of only schwertmannite was examined in iron solutions at the Cl−/SO42− molar ratios of 0–10 and pH 3.0 ± 0.1. There were differences in two typical morphologies of "pincushions" (Cl−/SO42− = 0 and 3) and "hedge-hogs" (Cl−/SO42− = 6 and 10) for the schwertmannite nanostructures. And all final schwertmannite particles had the chemical formulas of Fe8O8(OH)8−2 x (SO4) x (1.08 ≤ x ≤ 1.66), especially as Cl−/SO42− = 0, the visible "pincushions" only being the outermost sections of the whole needles existing in a tightly spherical assemblage of schwertmannite. Moreover, the absence of ferrihydrite and goethite was determined in the nanodimension of these needles, though the initial Fe and SO42− were 5600 and of 9600 µg/mL, respectively. It could be induced by the amounts and activities of aqueous Fe, SO42−, and Cl− associated with cellular activities and mineral precipitation. This study will be useful for understanding the actual occurrence of iron oxyhydroxide nanostructure and better developing its potential environmental application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim of the Study: During the reconstruction of alar defects involving the upper lip, reconstructive surgeons face the need for various thicknesses of tissues crucial to preserving the facial sulcus which is important for a cosmetically acceptable result. Our aim was to reconstruct the deep perialar and thinner lateral nasal alar defect in a single step procedure with a suitable flap which is reliable, has appropriate blood supply and provides an esthetically good result. Materials and Methods: Extended alar defect was reconstructed with a combined flap in 10 cases. During the procedure, a subcutaneous pedicle was created and the proximal part of the flap was rotated into the defect as a rotational flap. The procedure and the follow-up have been photo-documented in all cases. Furthermore, the perfusion of the flaps was monitored by means of laser Doppler flowmetry. Postoperative complications were evaluated with a semi-quantitative score and the patients completed a patient satisfaction questionnaire, too. Results: An optimal esthetic result was obtained in all cases after the operation. The lateral nasal alar part of the defect was reconstructed with the thinner proximal part of the flap while the deeper perialar region involving the upper lip was covered with the thicker distal part. The flaps have shown sufficient blood flow after the operation. There was no significant pin cushioning or "trap-door" effect in any case. Mild erythema and edema was found in few cases. The patients were satisfied with the cosmetic result of the intervention. Conclusions: The flap is suitable for the reconstruction of alar defects involving the perialar region. It has the advantage of covering the deeper perialar and the thinner alar defects, whilst eliminating the pin cushioning effect of the conventional subcutaneous island pedicle flaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Handwriting style of an individual will be usually varying from other individuals. The degree of complexity involved in recognition of a handwritten character of south Indian languages is high due to the presence of compound characters. Furthermore the complexity of interpreting handwritten text aggravates due to irregular handwriting styles. Building of datasets for training the database in such environments is tremendous and requires a lot of manual data processing and other preliminary tasks. The major contribution focuses on creation of morphable feature space for addressing handwritten recognition problem. In this paper, techniques useful for simplifying dataset preparation procedures along with a hybrid recognition approach for improvising recognition accuracies of Telugu handwritten characters are proposed. The techniques include text document segmentation, automatic cropping and pincushion and distance transformation based recognition approach. A feature vector is generated from the normalized Gabor features are extracted from pincushion and distance transform models of a character image and classified using Ada boost classifier with a recognition accuracy of 89%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]