Linden Photonics (United States)

The article is dedicated to the study of Belarusian projects in the development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The purpose of this research was to trace how Belarus's attitude and degree of participation in the Arctic has changed. This topic is more relevant today than ever. The Northern Sea Route is one of the most unique routes in the world. In 2025, the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the exploration of the NSR will be celebrated. In 2022, the 90th anniversary of the NSR was marked, as in 1932, Otto Schmidt's expedition on the icebreaker ship "Alexander Sibiryakov" became the first in the world to navigate the entire Northern Sea Route in one navigation season. In the current geopolitical conditions, when Belarus, like Russia, is under sanctions, this maritime port gains even more significance. The article employs the method of comparative retrospective and statistical analysis, which helped to see how Belarus's degree of involvement in the development of the NSR has changed. State programs of the republic aimed at expanding cooperation with the Arctic regions of Russia were studied as sources. The novelty of the research lies in the comprehensive and detailed analysis of the different stages of Belarus's interest in the Arctic, which has been maturing for quite some time; corresponding special state programs were adopted in the republic in 2011 and 2015. This is especially relevant today, as Belarus has been under strict Western sanctions since 2020, cutting it off from the ports of the Baltic States. After that, Minsk began to focus on cooperation with Moscow in using Russian ports. The situation began to change even more rapidly after 2022 when it became clear that Belarus had no access to external markets except through Russian territory. Belarus is interested in transporting potash fertilizers and other types of its products via the NSR. Investors from Belarus are investing in the construction of new ports in the Murmansk region and Primorye. Regional cooperation is expanding. Particular attention is paid to the Russian regions along which the NSR runs. If Belarus can properly take advantage of the situation and become one of the active participants in this process, it will be able not only to trade freely with the Asian region in the future but also to become an integral element of the functioning of the NSR.

This study is dedicated to the analysis of the reception of the amnesty for the Decembrists in 1856 in the British press in the context of the geopolitical consequences of the Crimean War and the ongoing reassessment of the international position of the Russian Empire. The focus is on the perceptions of British newspapers regarding the nature of Alexander II's political course and the significance of the amnesty as a symbolic step reflecting the transition from the repressive policies of the Nicholas era to a more flexible model of autocratic governance. Special attention is given to how the amnesty for the Decembrists was interpreted by the British press as an indicator of internal transformations in Russia, affecting the realm of civil liberties, the state's relationship with opposition elites, and the regime's willingness to make partial concessions to liberal expectations. The study examines the amnesty not only as an act of clemency but also as an important element of the international-political and informational positioning of the Russian Empire on the European stage. The methodological framework of the research includes comparative-historical and discourse analysis, applied to materials from British (“The Guardian,” “The Times,” “Daily News”) and Russian periodicals (“Moscow News,” “Saint Petersburg News”), systematizing mentions of the amnesty and Alexander II's coronation, identifying key semantic oppositions and contextual factors. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive consideration of the amnesty for the Decembrists as a media and political event simultaneously, through the prism of comparing British and Russian newspaper narratives. For the first time, based on a systematized corpus of publications from 1856–1858, it is demonstrated that the British press interpreted the amnesty as an ambivalent gesture: on one hand, as a triumph of liberal ideas and a symbol of the departure from the repressive nature of the Nicholas regime, and on the other hand, as an incomplete measure that exacerbated the social marginalization of the Decembrists due to the non-return of confiscated property. The Russian press, constrained by censorship, constructed the image of the amnesty as a step towards national reconciliation and future reforms, cautiously hinting at the need for deeper transformations. It is shown that both interpretations, despite their differences, converge in recognizing the high historical significance of the amnesty for the transformation of Russia's image both domestically and in the eyes of Europe, as well as for rethinking the relationship between power and society at the beginning of Alexander II's reign.

This paper mainly studied the impact of home quarantine on depression among quarantined people in Shanghai, China, when the outbreak of COVID-19 suddenly recurred in the city in early 2022. A group of people were randomly selected to collect the responses of quarantined people online. The questions the quarantined person answered included basic personal information as well as basic information about the quarantine situation. Finally, it is concluded that the isolation without hope for a long time will have certain psychological impact on the isolated people to a certain extent. At the same time, different personal circumstances also affect the probability of depression in isolated people.

Opioid use and misuse are urgent health issues. Previous studies suggest that opioid use increases healthcare resource use but severity adjustment is lacking. The objective of this study wasto evaluate the severity-adjusted cost difference between opioid users and non-users among patients with conservatively managed degenerative joint disease of the spine within a large commercial health plan population in the United States. A retrospective observational study was performed using a national commercial database covering 531,819 patients aged 18-64years with non-surgically managed cervical or lumbar degenerative spine disease during 2015-6. Patients were grouped based on whether there was evidence for an opioid prescription. Costs for the opioids themselves were excluded. Severity adjustment, on an ascending integer scale from 1 to 4, was performed based on member demographics, clinical comorbidities, disease progression indicators, and complications. Median episode costs for patients given opioids were approximately twice that for patients not given opioids after severity adjustment. For patients with episodes in both years and stable severity, patients with new prescriptions for opioids in 2016 doubled their median 2015 costs, and patients who had opioids discontinued in 2016 had a 60% cost reduction. Episode costs showed a nearly linear increase based on the length of time taking opioids, as well as with a higher average daily dose. Cost increases with opioids were broad across service categories even when comparing within the same severity-adjusted episodes of care. The data suggest a clinically and statistically significant increase in episode costs associated with opioid use for degenerative joint disease of the spine, both within and between patients, and higher costs with a longer duration of opioid use as well as with higher daily dosages. Given the health consequences surrounding the overuse of opioids, concerted efforts to move towards a non-opioid pain control strategy are needed.

Bridge expansion joints are a particularly troublesome component of bridges, and many DOTs are seeking maintenance solutions for deteriorating expansion joints. Bridge expansion joints create a break in the structural continuity of a bridge, allowing clogging gravels and corroding chlorides to enter. To prevent deterioration of other bridge elements, the joints must be cleaned regularly and replaced promptly after failure. Unfortunately, limited time and resources hinder most DOTs from properly maintaining expansion joints, which eventually leads to deterioration of bridge elements. To reduce maintenance problems, some DOTs have started to move away from the practice of repeatedly replacing the joints upon failure in favor of retrofitting bridges to remove joints altogether. Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) provides a formal way to compare alternative approaches for dealing with bridge expansion joints. This paper presents an LCCA for existing bridge expansion joint alternatives, including the practices of routine joint replacement and removal of joints. Three different cost scenarios are considered, including the consequences of leaking expansion joints. All scenarios indicate that the removal of all bridge expansion joints in favor of a continuous bridge deck is a cost-effective maintenance solution.

We examined the extent to which different sounds functioned as motivating operations (MO) that evoked problem behavior during a functional analysis for two participants. Results suggested that escape from loud noises reinforced the problem behavior for one participant and escape from arguing reinforced problem behavior for the other participant. Noncontingent delivery of preferred music through sound-attenuating headphones decreased problem behavior without the use of extinction for both participants. We discuss the results in terms of the abolishing effects of the intervention.

Interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) is an evaluation methodology in which a single treatment unit's outcome is studied serially over time and the intervention is expected to "interrupt" the level and/or trend of that outcome. The internal validity is strengthened considerably when the treated unit is contrasted with a comparable control group. In this paper, we introduce a robustness check based on permutation tests to further improve causal inference. We evaluate the effect of California's Proposition 99 for reducing cigarette sales by iteratively casting each nontreated state into the role of "treated," creating a comparable control group using the ITSAMATCH package in Stata, and then evaluating treatment effects using ITSA regression. If statistically significant "treatment effects" are estimated for pseudotreated states, then any significant changes in the outcome of the actual treatment unit (California) cannot be attributed to the intervention. We perform these analyses setting the cutpoint significance level to P>.40 for identifying balanced matches (the highest threshold possible for which controls could still be found for California) and use the difference in differences of trends as the treatment effect estimator. Only California attained a statistically significant treatment effect, strengthening confidence in the conclusion that Proposition 99 reduced cigarette sales. The proposed permutation testing framework provides an additional robustness check to either support or refute a treatment effect identified in for the true treated unit in ITSA. Given its value and ease of implementation, this framework should be considered as a standard robustness test in all multiple group interrupted time series analyses.

Interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) is an evaluation methodology in which a single treatment unit's outcome is studied over time and the intervention is expected to "interrupt" the level and/or trend of the outcome. The internal validity is strengthened considerably when the treated unit is contrasted with a comparable control group. In this paper, we introduce a robust evaluation framework that combines the synthetic controls method (SYNTH) to generate a comparable control group and ITSA regression to assess covariate balance and estimate treatment effects. We evaluate the effect of California's Proposition 99 for reducing cigarette sales, by comparing California to other states not exposed to smoking reduction initiatives. SYNTH is used to reweight nontreated units to make them comparable to the treated unit. These weights are then used in ITSA regression models to assess covariate balance and estimate treatment effects. Covariate balance was achieved for all but one covariate. While California experienced a significant decrease in the annual trend of cigarette sales after Proposition 99, there was no statistically significant treatment effect when compared to synthetic controls. The advantage of using this framework over regression alone is that it ensures that a comparable control group is generated. Additionally, it offers a common set of statistical measures familiar to investigators, the capability for assessing covariate balance, and enhancement of the evaluation with a comprehensive set of postestimation measures. Therefore, this robust framework should be considered as a primary approach for evaluating treatment effects in multiple group time series analysis.

Randomization ensures that treatment groups do not differ systematically in their characteristics, thereby reducing threats to validity that may otherwise explain differences in outcomes. Large observed imbalances in patient characteristics may indicate that selection bias is being introduced into the treatment allocation process. We introduce classification tree analysis (CTA) as a novel algorithmic approach for identifying potential imbalances in characteristics and their interactions when provisionally assigning each new participant to one or the other treatment group. The participant is then permanently assigned to the treatment group that elicits either no or less imbalance than if assigned to the alternate group. Using data on participant characteristics from a clinical trial, we compare 3 different treatment allocation approaches: permuted block randomization (the original allocation method), minimization, and CTA. Treatment allocation performance is assessed by examining balance of all 17 patient characteristics between study groups for each of the allocation techniques. While all 3 treatment allocation techniques achieved excellent balance on main effect variables, Classification tree analysis further identified imbalances on interactions and in the distributions of some of the continuous variables. Classification tree analysis offers an algorithmic procedure that may be used with any randomization methodology to identify and then minimize linear, nonlinear, and interactive effects that induce covariate imbalance between groups. Investigators should consider using the CTA approach as a real-time complement to randomization for any clinical trial to safeguard the treatment allocation process against bias.