The myth of Perseus and Medusa has stimulated the imagination of numerous artists, who have developed variations on both the reference symbols and the styles and content of its narrative, employing different languages, from poetry, sculpture, and painting, to contemporary cinema, beginning in the 8th century BC. This work, therefore, aims to identify the possible determinants of this persistence, employing a model that integrates psychoanalysis, anthropology, and semiotics, placing its use also ...

Anthropology 

Many young people in Kenya grow up in settings where motivation, goal focus, and school connectedness develop with uneven adult guidance and limited structured support, yet these characteristics remain central to Positive Youth Development (PYD). The study examined the link between these characteristics and PYD of secondary school adolescents within school-based mentorship programs in Kibra Sub-County, Nairobi County. It utilized a cross-sectional convergent parallel design involving sampling of...

Educational Reform 

Introduction: Head and neck radiotherapy, although curative, is associated with significant toxicity affecting the oral cavity. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence, severity, and weekly progression of acute oral complications in a Moroccan cohort. Materials and Methods: A prospective longitudinal observational study was conducted between June and December 2021. Twenty-one patients receiving a cumulative radiation dose of ≥ 60 Gy were followed on a weekly basis. Oral complic...

Dentistry 

Pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM), as a key driving component of soft robot, faces the difficulty of high precision control because of its strong nonlinear and hysteresis characteristics. This paper systematically reviews the evolution of PAM modeling and control strategies, from physical mechanism modeling to data-driven methods, from classical control to intelligent algorithms, and discusses the cutting-edge progress of multimodal perception and human-machine collaboration. On this basis, an i...

Automata 

The increasing use of electronic cigarettes has raised concerns regarding the potential environmental impact of e-cigarette refill liquids and their release into aquatic ecosystems. Despite their growing consumption worldwide, information concerning their ecotoxicological effects on aquatic vertebrates remains limited. In the present study, the acute toxicity of an electronic cigarette refill liquid was evaluated using different aquatic vertebrate models, including fish eggs (Danio rer...

Environmental Chemistry 

Spiritual care occupations—spiritual direction and professional chaplaincy chief among them—occupy a professional jurisdiction whose cognitive foundation is not a body of techniques but an ontological commitment: the claim that the phenomena they address (vocation, discernment, encounter, the experience of being addressed by something exceeding the self) are real in a manner not exhaustively reducible to intrapsychic process. Drawing on Abbott’s theory of professional jurisdiction and DiMaggio a...

Sociology 

Early Childhood Caries (ECC) is an aggressive form of dental caries affecting the primary dentition of preschool children. The consequences of ECC extend far beyond the oral cavity and impact the child’s general health and well-being. Parents’ quality of life is also affected, particularly because of daily stress, feelings of guilt regarding their child’s health status, and the professional and financial constraints related to dental care. The aim of this study was to describe the effects of Ear...

Dentistry 

The geometric integrity of the fusion zone (FZ) is a critical determinant of weld quality in Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding. This study presents a comparative analysis of Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for modeling and predicting FZ width geometry in AISI 1020 mild steel weldments. Experiments were conducted using a Central Composite Design (CCD) comprising 30 runs, varying current, voltage, travel speed, and gas flow rate. A quadratic regression model ...

Materials Engineering 

Against the backdrop of deepening economic and trade cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative and the accelerated transformation of international Chinese language education, special-purpose business Chinese oriented toward cross-border trade is plagued by prominent drawbacks including disconnection between teaching content and practical business scenarios, high learning costs, insufficient multilingual support and lack of personalized learning services. Powered by its capabilities in conte...

Literature 

The Old Man and the Sea, as Hemingway’s peak work, has been interpreted from the perspectives of heroism, symbolism or metaphorical interpretation, but Santiago’s “oldness” has been rarely studied even neglected. Under the framework of Age Studies, this thesis focuses on the “decline narrative” in this novella to reveal the triple decline: Santiago’s aging body, Hemingway’s waning writing talent, and Spain’s fading empire power. The intertwining decline narratives deconstruct the s...

Literature