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The resemblance between the 1944 outline scheme for Jerusalem and the 1955 one, and the political constellation in which the latter was prepared, raise questions as to its genuine planning necessit...

The present study aims to explore gay Israeli fathers’ responses and resistance to societal criticism on their decision to become parents through transnational surrogacy. The authors interviewed 39 Israeli gay men who became parents via transnational gestational surrogacy using in-depth, semistructured interviews. Analysis of the interviews suggest that the gay fathers responded to societal perceptions on their choice of surrogacy, which they interpreted as heterosexist and hostile, by relating them to Israeli dominant ideologies and constructing a counter discourse that frames surrogacy as an intimate process fostering gender and parental change. Yet, while the participants portray surrogacy as a catalyst for social change, their accounts are embedded within an Israeli context defined by pronatalist and neoliberal ideologies, showing how accounts of change are intertwined within hegemonic ideologies.

The perceptual organization of pitch is frequently described as helical, with a monotonic dimension of pitch height and a circular dimension of pitch chroma, accounting for the repeating structure of the octave. Although the neural representation of pitch height is widely studied, the way in which pitch chroma representation is manifested in neural activity is currently debated. We tested the automaticity of pitch chroma processing using the MMN—an ERP component indexing automatic detection of deviations from auditory regularity. Musicians trained to classify pure or complex tones across four octaves, based on chroma—C versus G (21 participants, Experiment 1) or C versus F# (27, Experiment 2). Next, they were passively exposed to MMN protocols designed to test automatic detection of height and chroma deviations. Finally, in an “attend chroma” block, participants had to detect the chroma deviants in a sequence similar to the passive MMN sequence. The chroma deviant tones were accurately detected in the training and the attend chroma parts both for pure and complex tones, with a slightly better performance for complex tones. However, in the passive blocks, a significant MMN was found only to height deviations and complex tone chroma deviations, but not to pure tone chroma deviations, even for perfect performers in the active tasks. These results indicate that, although height is represented preattentively, chroma is not. Processing the musical dimension of chroma may require higher cognitive processes, such as attention and working memory.

Abstract The four-words phrase עד כי יבא שילה in Gen 49:10b is a famous crux interpretum. I argue that the poem now contained in Genesis 49:2-27 had an elaborate numerical structure of verses, cola and words and that this structure can be fully appreciated only when we read this phrase as a five-words one: עד כי יבא שי לה.

Abstract While an ever-growing percentage of the world's population is urban, the rate at which cities grow is not uniform. The lifetime of individual cities includes periods of fast growth, slow growth and periods of shrinkage. There exists an extensive literature concerned with possible means to manage specific pathologies. It is our view that the design of specific policies should be the result of a comprehensive model of urban health. While not all cities go through the entire life cycle, a comprehensive theory of cities and specific policies need to include specification of the interaction of the various forces that shape the entire range of urban patterns and identification of specific combinations of values that create phase transitions among these patterns. To sort these ideas we suggest that there is a need to consider and incorporate the structure and timing of innovation activities, agglomeration effects that they generate, interurban migration patterns and assorted feedback mechanisms. We hypothesize that these flows depend on the activity rhythms of the various processes and their differential impact on cities. We present a biology inspired rudimentary framework as a basis for the construction of an ABM of cities with a focus on the nature of time and as a basis for analyzing urban dynamics. 1

Achalasia is a chronic idiopathic disease characterized by the absence of esophageal body peristalsis and by defective lower esophageal sphincter (LES) relaxation. The incidence rate ranges from 1.07 to up to 2.8 new cases per year per 100,000 population. Presenting symptoms include dysphagia, regurgitation, vomiting, and weight loss. The diagnosis of achalasia has undergone a revolution in the last decade due to the advent of high-resolution manometry (HRM) and the consequent development of the Chicago Classification. Recent progress has allowed achalasia to be more precisely diagnosed and to be categorized into three subtypes, based on the prevalent manometric features of the esophageal peristalsis. Treatment options are pharmacotherapy, endoscopic management (Botox injection or pneumatic dilation), and surgery, e.g. laparoscopic Heller myotomy (LHM). More recently, a new endoscopic technique, per oral endoscopic myotomy (POEM), has developed as a less invasive approach alternative to the traditional LHM. Since the first POEM procedure was performed in 2008, increasing evidence is accumulating regarding its efficacy and safety profiles. Currently, POEM is being introduced as a reasonable therapeutic option, though randomized controlled trails are still lacking. The current review sheds light onto the diagnosis and management of achalasia, with special focus on the recent advances of HRM and POEM.

Optical mitigation of interchannel interference (ICI) for multiple spectrally overlapped data channels is experimentally demonstrated without multichannel detection and channel spacing estimation. The ICI mitigation takes place in three stages of periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguides. In the first PPLN stage, the conjugate copies of channels are generated. In the second stage, the overlapped signals are coherently multiplexed with different complex taps. In the third stage, the concurrent nonlinear processes and the coherent multiplexing of the signals with their delayed copies compensate the ICI. The bit error rate and the constellation diagrams of wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) channels carrying quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) or 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) formats demonstrate the potential capability of the proposed method to reduce the ICI and its possible modulation format transparency. The effect of channel spacing on the performance of the method is also demonstrated. After optical ICI mitigation, a reduction of almost 4 dB is achieved for the value of optical signal-to-noise ratio at BER of 10–3 for 20-GBd QPSK signals with a channel spacing of 17.5 GHz. The overlapped WDM system of 20-GBd 16-QAM signals with channel spacing of 17.5 GHz is also ICI mitigated and error vector magnitudes are reduced by almost 28%.

Laser-induced hydrogen plasma in the density and temperature range of $(0.1--5)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{23}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{m}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ and $(6000--20000)\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{K}$, respectively, was precisely diagnosed using two-color Thomson scattering technique, inferring the electron number density, electron temperature as well as ion temperature. Simultaneously, spectra of the Balmer series of spectral lines from H-$\ensuremath{\beta}$ to H-$\ensuremath{\zeta}$ were measured and plasma emission coefficient calculated within the quasicontiguous frequency-fluctuation model. The theoretical spectra are found to be in good agreement with experimental ones, including higher-density data where discrete lines were observed to merge forming a continuum.