We study the pairwise interactions of drops in an applied uniform DC electric field within the framework of the leaky dielectric model. We develop three-dimensional numerical simulations using the boundary integral method and an analytical theory assuming small drop deformations. We apply the simulations and the theory to explore the electrohydrodynamic interactions between two identical drops with arbitrary orientation of their line of centres relative to the applied field direction. Our results show a complex dynamics depending on the conductivities and permittivities of the drops and suspending fluids, and the initial drop pair alignment with the applied electric field.

Normal cardiac function is directly associated with the maintenance of cerebrovascular health. Whether the Mediterranean-Dietary Approach to Systolic Hypertension Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet, designed for the maintenance of neurocognitive health, is associated with cardiac remodeling is unknown. We evaluated 2512 Framingham Offspring Cohort participants who attended the 8th examination cycle and had available dietary and echocardiographic data (mean age 66 years; 55% women). Using multivariable regression, we related the cumulative MIND diet score (independent variable) to left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction, left atrial emptying fraction, LV mass (LVM), E/e’ ratio (dependent variables; primary), global longitudinal strain, global circumferential strain (GCS), mitral annular plane systolic excursion, longitudinal segmental synchrony, LV hypertrophy, and aortic root diameter (secondary). Adjusting for age, sex, and energy intake, higher cumulative MIND diet scores were associated with lower values of indices of LV diastolic (E/e’ ratio: logβ=-0.03) and systolic function (GCS: β=-0.04), and with higher values of LVM (logβ=0.02), all P≤0.01. We observed effect modification by age in the association between the cumulative MIND diet score and GCS. When we further adjusted for clinical risk factors, the associations of the cumulative MIND diet score with GCS in participants ≥66 years (β=-0.06, P=0.005) and LVM remained significant. In our community-based sample, relations between the cumulative MIND diet score and cardiac remodeling differ among indices of LV structure and function. Our results suggest that favorable associations between a higher cumulative MIND diet score and indices of LV function may be influenced by cardiometabolic and lifestyle risk factors.

Ladin (ISO 639-3: lld) is a Romance language spoken in the Italian Central-Eastern Alps by a community of about 30,000 speakers (Dell’Aquila 2010). The classification of Ladin within Western Romance has been the subject of a long-lasting scientific and at times ideological debate, particularly because at the end of the 19th century the region was contested between the new-born Italian state and the Habsburg empire. The varieties of Ladin share phonetic-phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features with the other languages spoken in the Central-Eastern Alps, such as Friulian and Romansh, thus leading to the identification of the Rhaeto-Romance group (Haiman & Benincà 1992). However, in Ladin there are still many linguistic phenomena that connect it to the Romance dialects of Northern Italy. Therefore, a clear assignment of Ladin to a group is by no means a simple and uncontroversial operation (Salvi 2016).

The remnant phase of a radio galaxy begins when the jets launched from an active galactic nucleus are switched off. To study the fraction of radio galaxies in a remnant phase, we take advantage of a $8.31$ deg$^2$ subregion of the GAMA 23 field which comprises of surveys covering the frequency range 0.1–9 GHz. We present a sample of 104 radio galaxies compiled from observations conducted by the Murchison Widefield Array (216 MHz), the Australia Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (887 MHz), and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (5.5 GHz). We adopt an ‘absent radio core’ criterion to identify 10 radio galaxies showing no evidence for an active nucleus. We classify these as new candidate remnant radio galaxies. Seven of these objects still display compact emitting regions within the lobes at 5.5 GHz; at this frequency the emission is short-lived, implying a recent jet switch off. On the other hand, only three show evidence of aged lobe plasma by the presence of an ultra-steep-spectrum ($\alpha<-1.2$) and a diffuse, low surface brightness radio morphology. The predominant fraction of young remnants is consistent with a rapid fading during the remnant phase. Within our sample of radio galaxies, our observations constrain the remnant fraction to $4\%\lesssim f_{\mathrm{rem}} \lesssim 10\%$; the lower limit comes from the limiting case in which all remnant candidates with hotspots are simply active radio galaxies with faint, undetected radio cores. Finally, we model the synchrotron spectrum arising from a hotspot to show they can persist for 5–10 Myr at 5.5 GHz after the jets switch of—radio emission arising from such hotspots can therefore be expected in an appreciable fraction of genuine remnants.

Children's vocabulary ability at school entry is highly variable and predictive of later language and literacy outcomes. Sleep is potentially useful in understanding and explaining that variability, with sleep patterns being predictive of global trajectories of language acquisition. Here, we looked to replicate and extend these findings. Data from 354 children (without English as an additional language) in the Born in Bradford study were analysed, describing the mean intercepts and linear trends in parent-reported day-time and night-time sleep duration over five time points between 6 and 36 months-of-age. The mean difference between night-time and day-time sleep was predictive of receptive vocabulary at age five, with more night-time sleep relative to day-time sleep predicting better language. An exploratory analysis suggested that socioeconomic status was predictive of vocabulary outcomes, with sleep patterns partially mediating this relationship. We suggest that the consolidation of sleep patterns acts as a driver of early language development.

We have found a class of circular radio objects in the Evolutionary Map of the Universe Pilot Survey, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. The objects appear in radio images as circular edge-brightened discs, about one arcmin diameter, that are unlike other objects previously reported in the literature. We explore several possible mechanisms that might cause these objects, but none seems to be a compelling explanation.

Using novel weekly mortality data for London spanning 1866-1965, we analyze the changing relationship between temperature and mortality as the city developed. Our main results show that warm weeks led to elevated mortality in the late nineteenth century, mainly due to infant deaths from digestive diseases. However, this pattern largely disappeared after WWI as infant digestive diseases became less prevalent. The resulting change in the temperature-mortality relationship meant that thousands of heat-related deaths—equal to 0.9-1.4 percent of all deaths— were averted. These findings show that improving the disease environment can dramatically alter the impact of high temperature on mortality.

During the past two decades, several reports have documented substantial support from clinicians, policy-makers, and the general public for the use of advance directives, yet studies continue to find that only a minority of individuals (10 to 25 percent) have completed these legal documents. Advance directives are written instructions, such as living wills or durable powers of attorney for health care, which describe an individual's medical treatment wishes in the event that individual becomes incapacitated in the future. The completion and use of advance directives is one of several components of the broader activity of advance care planning, that is, the overall planning and communication of personal wishes concerning future medical care.

In December 1991, the federal Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) became effective. Promoted as a federal initiative to enhance an individual's control over medical treatment decision making and, therefore, patient autonomy and self-determination, PSDA placed several new requirements on health care organizations receiving Medicare or Medicaid payments.

Winfried Siemerling’s The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Historical Past, to put it mildly, is an impressive piece of scholarship that will stand as one of the definitive works on the histories of Black writing in Canada for the foreseeable future. In his preface, Siemerling states that he embarked upon this undertaking when he learned, to his surprise (one is reminded here, incidentally, of Katherine McKittrick’s injunction that Black Canadian Studies is always constituted as a “surprise”), that there had been little written about Black contemporary writing aside from a few of the comprehensive and encyclopedic works that George Elliot Clarke published in the early to mid-1990s. It is this pioneering work upon which Siemerling builds. He starts with a discussion of “Modernity and Canadian Time-Spaces of the Black Atlantic” in his first chapter and introduction, where he lays out the analytical and conceptual approach of the work. Part 1, “Early Testimony and the Black Canadian Nineteenth Century,” includes chapters titled “Slavery and Early Black Canadian Writing” and “The Black Canadian Nineteenth Century.” Part 2, “The Presence of the Past,” highlights chapters that expand on the themes of “Slavery, the Black Canadian Nineteenth Century, and Caribbean Contexts in Contemporary Black Canadian Writing” and move into a discussion of what he calls “Other Black Canadas” and “Coda: Other Canadas, Other Americas, the Black Atlantic Reconsidered.”