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To English eyes, France's first stageworthy adaptation of a Shakespeare play, Jean-François Ducis's Hamlet (1769), is a pale but gloomy shadow of the original. One of the few elements of Shakespeare's tragedy that Ducis retains is the Ghost of Hamlet's father, who presses the hero on to avenge the original murder. But Ducis's Ghost is both more savage and more ambiguous than Shakespeare's; being perceptible to none but Hamlet, it may be no more than a hallucination. More bloodthirsty than its Shakespearean counterpart, it demands that Hamlet kill his mother Gertrude alongside Claudius, thus producing a conflict of loyalties that leads him to doubt the moral legitimacy of his mission. Although Ducis himself later felt compelled to rewrite his own ending, in all versions Hamlet's sustained refusal to accede to the Ghost's demands eventually marks his triumph over both his melancholy and his incapacities as incumbent ruler of Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All UN member States committed to realizing universal health coverage (UHC) when they included UHC as Target 3.8 in the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. However, the global commitment to UHC has not been matched with action on the ground. According to the World Health Organization, about half of the world population lacks full coverage for essential health services. To accelerate progress toward UHC, a close understanding of factors that drive adoption of UHC policies at the national and local levels is essential. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impetus for establishing a sub-national health insurance program in Kenya—the Makueni county government health insurance program (MakueniCare)—which led to increasing the percentage of the county population with health insurance, the majority of whom live in poverty, from 8.8% in 2013 to 91% in 2018. This qualitative case study drew on Kenyan law and policy documents as well as semi-structured interviews with 30 key informants in government and NGOs to understand the drivers that led to the establishment of MakueniCare. Findings revealed that several drivers—namely, global norms, decentralization, democratic competition, and the strategic action of social change-minded leaders—coalesced to influence the adoption of MakueniCare. The study offers timely insights into the factors driving UHC in Makueni, Kenya and lessons for other low- and middle-income countries working toward UHC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence (AI) may soon equip clinicians with algorithms that model and predict perioperative problems with extreme accuracy. Here, we outline emerging AI applications in preoperative risk stratification and intraoperative event prediction, where algorithm performance has been shown to outstrip commonly used conventional risk prediction tools. While offering an enticing view of a novel perioperative practice with superhuman foresight, AI's limited scope and lack of transparency remain key challenges for widespread adoption. As yet it is unclear whether machine learning alone can influence human clinical practice to exert real-world effects on patient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex trauma is associated with complex-posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). While dissociative processes, developmental factors and systemic factors are implicated in the development of CPTSD, there are no existing systematic reviews examining the underlying pathways linking complex trauma and CPTSD. This study aims to systematically review evidence of mediating factors linking complex trauma exposureinchildhood(birth to eighteen yearsof age) andsubsequentdevelopmentof CPTSD (via self-reports and diagnostic assessments). All clinical, at-risk and community-sampled articles on three online databases (PsycINFO, MedLine and Embase) were systematically searched, along with grey literature from ProQuest. Fifteen articles were eligible for inclusion according to pre-determined eligibility criteria and a search strategy. Five categories of mediating processes were identified: 1) dissociative processes; 2) relationship with self; 3) emotional developmental processes; 4) social developmental processes; and 5) systemic and contextual factors. Further research is required to examine the extent to which targeting these mediators may act as mechanisms for change in supporting individuals to heal from complex trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a book titled "More than a health crisis: securitization and the US response to the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak" by Jessica Kirk. The book critically examines the securitization of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and its impact on the United States' response. Kirk analyzes different discourses surrounding the outbreak, including "helpless west Africa," "potential global catastrophe," and "America under threat," as well as a counter-discourse called "Fearbola." The book offers insights into the contestation between these discourses and their influence on policy decisions. It also contributes to the literature on racialization and global health. While the article praises the book's methodology and approach, it suggests that more transparency in the discussion of methods would have been beneficial. Overall, the article recommends the book as a valuable resource for understanding the securitization of the Ebola outbreak and its implications. [Extracted from the article]

Archaeologists commonly include climatic data in their analyses of living in the past, but rarely do current weather conditions achieve mention in our professional considerations. The Kites in Context Project (KiC) focuses on a multi-scalar investigation of desert kites in the eastern badia region of Jordan. During the Neolithic (7000–5000 b.c.) period, people began building large animal traps, known as desert kites, across a wide swath of southwestern Asia. This multi-year project is designed to provide novel insights into the chronology and function of these animal traps through an intensive study incorporating remote sensing with boots-on-the-ground excavation and survey. The 2023 season began like any other—a combination of aerial survey using drones, walking the landscape in a pedestrian survey, and excavation under sunny skies. During our 2023 field season in Jordan, we experienced dramatic, atypical weather, likely driven by climate change. In this photo essay, we present images from this surprising rain and flooding event in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan that caused us to consider on a more personal level the challenges that may have faced the hunters and herders who constructed the kites and who managed the water thousands of years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehend, Cope and Connect' (CCC) is an evidence-based psychological intervention for psychological crisis designed for use in inpatient settings. The aims of the current study were to gain the perspectives of multidisciplinary team (MDT) staff, patients and carers to inform the design of a potential CCC training programme for MDT staff to deliver CCC interventions. Staff, patient and carer perspectives on developing a CCC training programme were collected through video call-based group consultations and written feedback. Thematic analysis was employed to organise and explore latent themes within the data. Thirteen MDT inpatient staff and an expert patient and carer panel of four participated in the study. Feedback showed that the CCC model supported staff in understanding patients beyond labels in a patient-centred and led capacity, and that CCC was helpful in bringing clarity to crisis. Staff participants stated that learning and practicing psychological skills and encouraging confidence would be important when training staff in CCC. They identified needs to embed CCC into ward culture and integrate CCC with care planning for successful implementation of CCC in inpatient settings. The patient and carer panel focused on the needs of patients, concluding that CCC training should emphasise the need to understand patient experience, and promote compassion and empathy. These findings provide evidence for what staff, patients, and carers consider to be important when training MDT staff to deliver CCC interventions in an inpatient setting and form a foundation for implementation of CCC training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This summary discusses the importance of incorporating sociology and political science into the study of global health. It highlights influential books and articles that challenge assumptions and provide insights into various aspects of global health, such as the impact of education on HIV/AIDS rates in Kenya and the influence of neoliberalism on healthcare in Tajikistan. The article emphasizes the need for a more inclusive and diverse approach to global health research, recognizing the perspectives of the Global South. The text summarizes a special issue on global health research, covering topics such as disability regimes, mental health care, privatization of universal health coverage, struggles with COVID-19 vaccine production, health tourism, and the relationship between democracy and gender inequalities in health. The articles highlight the need for thoughtful approaches to understanding power dynamics in global health and suggest future research directions. [Extracted from the article]

COVID-19 has focused global attention on disease spread across borders. But how has research on infectious and noncommunicable disease figured into the sociological imagination historically, and to what degree has American medical sociology examined health problems beyond U.S. borders? Our 35-year content analysis of 2,588 presentations in the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Section on Medical Sociology and 922 articles within the section's official journal finds less than 15 percent of total research examined contexts outside the United States. Research on three infectious diseases in the top eight causes of death in low-income countries (diarrheal disease, malaria, and tuberculosis [TB]) and emerging diseases—Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)—was nearly absent, as was research on major noncommunicable diseases. Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) received much more focus, although world regions hit hardest received scant attention. Interviews suggest a number of factors shape geographic foci of research, but this epistemic parochialism may ultimately impoverish sociological understanding of illness and disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the private sector structure the trajectory of a country's universal healthcare programme? Social scientists have long pointed to the importance of path dependence in shaping health reform. Yet, rarely have middle-income countries' experience with the private sector under Universal Health Coverage (UHC) been examined from comparative perspective. In this paper, we explore the changing landscape of the health sector in Brazil and Thailand before UHC reform and after. We find path-dependent processes at work that have pushed two countries that both adopted UHC reforms in divergent directions. In Brazil, a comparatively large and entrenched private sector that existed before reform has grown over time, and a sizable private health insurance industry has exerted powerful influence on health policy, weakening the public sector. In Thailand, constraints on private health insurance growth and sustained investment in public health infrastructure and governance have helped check the growth of private sector influence, although battles over health policy still remain contentious. The experiences of these countries offer lessons for policymakers seeking to achieve and maintain robust UHC programmes in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims/hypothesis: Although targeted in extrapancreatic tissues by several drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes, the role of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in the control of insulin secretion is still debatable. Previous studies have used pharmacological activators of limited selectivity and specificity, and none has examined in primary pancreatic beta cells the actions of the latest generation of highly potent and specific activators that act via the allosteric drug and metabolite (ADaM) site. Methods: AMPK was activated acutely in islets isolated from C57BL6/J mice, and in an EndoC-βH3 cell line, using three structurally distinct ADaM site activators (991, PF-06409577 and RA089), with varying selectivity for β1- vs β2-containing complexes. Mouse lines expressing a gain-of-function mutation in the γ1 AMPK subunit (D316a) were generated to examine the effects of chronic AMPK stimulation in the whole body, or selectively in the beta cell. Results: Acute (1.5 h) treatment of wild-type mouse islets with 991, PF-06409577 or RA089 robustly stimulated insulin secretion at high glucose concentrations (p<0.01, p<0.05 and p<0.001, respectively), despite a lowering of glucose-induced intracellular free Ca2+ dynamics in response to 991 (AUC, p<0.05) and to RA089 at the highest dose (25 μmol/l) at 5.59 min (p<0.05). Although abolished in the absence of AMPK, the effects of 991 were observed in the absence of the upstream kinase, liver kinase B1, further implicating 'amplifying' pathways. In marked contrast, chronic activation of AMPK, either globally or selectively in the beta cell, achieved using a gain-of-function mutant, impaired insulin release in vivo (p<0.05 at 15 min following i.p. injection of 3 mmol/l glucose) and in vitro (p<0.01 following incubation of islets with 17 mmol/l glucose), and lowered glucose tolerance (p<0.001). Conclusions/interpretation: AMPK activation exerts complex, time-dependent effects on insulin secretion. These observations should inform the design and future clinical use of AMPK modulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of elastic anisotropy on Landau–de Gennes critical points, for nematic liquid crystals, on a square domain. The elastic anisotropy is captured by a parameter, L2 , and the critical points are described by 3 d.f. We analytically construct a symmetric critical point for all admissible values of L2 , which is necessarily globally stable for small domains, i.e. when the square edge length, λ , is small enough. We perform asymptotic analyses and numerical studies to discover at least five classes of these symmetric critical points—the WORS , Ring± , Constant and pWORS solutions, of which the WORS , Ring+ and Constant solutions can be stable. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the novel Constant solution is energetically preferable for large λ and large L2 , and prove associated stability results that corroborate the stabilizing effects of L2 for reduced Landau–de Gennes critical points. We complement our analysis with numerically computed bifurcation diagrams for different values of L2 , which illustrate the interplay of elastic anisotropy and geometry for nematic solution landscapes, at low temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: What did social science disciplines contribute to the study of global health before the coronavirus pandemic? This article compares the contributions of four major social science disciplines—anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology—to the study of global health. Methods: We assessed disciplinary contributions through analysis of Web of Science; disciplinary annual reviews; and each discipline's top two general focus journals, complemented by literature reviews. Results: Of the four disciplines, anthropology and economics have contributed relatively more in quantitative terms, although qualitative contributions have been refracted through the larger histories, methods, and theoretical concerns. Although interest in global health research has grown across the disciplines, only in anthropology has it achieved a measure of prominence in top journals. Conclusion: Cross‐disciplinary comparison draws out how each discipline approaches global health; which topics it studies; and the topic's centrality/marginality within the broader disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) are one of the most widespread and impactful malaria interventions in Africa, yet a spatially-resolved time series of ITN coverage has never been published. Using data from multiple sources, we generate high-resolution maps of ITN access, use, and nets-per-capita annually from 2000 to 2020 across the 40 highest-burden African countries. Our findings support several existing hypotheses: that use is high among those with access, that nets are discarded more quickly than official policy presumes, and that effectively distributing nets grows more difficult as coverage increases. The primary driving factors behind these findings are most likely strong cultural and social messaging around the importance of net use, low physical net durability, and a mixture of inherent commodity distribution challenges and less-than-optimal net allocation policies, respectively. These results can inform both policy decisions and downstream malaria analyses. Insecticide treated nets (ITNs) are an important part of malaria control in Africa and WHO targets aim for 80% coverage. This study estimates the spatio-temporal access and use of ITNs in Africa from 2000-2020, and shows that both metrics have improved over time but access remains below WHO targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paedophilic disorder is characterised by sexual attraction towards children. Classification of a counterpart as sexually attractive likely occurs rapidly, and involves both conscious and unconscious attentional and cognitive processes. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an imaging method especially well-suited to examine visual and attentional processes triggered by sexual images within the range of milliseconds. We investigated brain responses to sexual images depicting adults (frequent) and children (infrequent stimulus) in seventeen paedophilic patients with a history of child sexual offending (P + CSO) and twenty healthy controls (HC) during a passive visual oddball paradigm. Event-related fields (ERF) were measured to extract the magnetic visual mismatch negativity (vMMNm), and how it relates to the processing of different classes of sexual stimuli. P + CSO exhibited significantly longer vMMNm latencies (100–180 ms post-stimulus) than HC. Moreover, P + CSO showed widespread increased amplitudes in response to child images starting from P3a and P3b components and lasting up to 400 ms post-stimulus presentation localised in frontal and temporal brain regions. This study uncovers the first MEG differences in automatic change detection between P + CSO and HC during the presentation of subliminal sexual images of adults and children, contributing towards a better understanding of the neurobiological processes of P + CSO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism for the book "La Poétique" by Hippolyte-Jules Pilet de La Mesnardière, is presented. Topics include fundamental question for Jean Chapelain, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, and context of catharsis in regular or proto-classical theorists; and differentiate between two conceptions that are difficult to reconcile and and implicitly coded as masculine and feminine of the production of emotion by Marc Vuillermoz.

This article explores Corneille's 'prison monologues' – soliloquies uttered by imprisoned characters contemplating their own forthcoming execution. Unable to engage materially with the world, Corneille's prisoners are effectively reduced to voices; although objectively powerless, they are subjectively able to wield language as a tool to engage with and symbolically triumph over death. Refusing to condemn the potential fallibility or illegitimacy of the legal power that has condemned them, prisoners like the eponymous tragicomic hero of Clitandre and Clindor in L'Illusion comique devise creative, poetic accounts to justify and explain their imprisonment on a symbolic level, in an attempt to reconcile themselves to – or even to transcend – the degraded reality of their current situation and their upcoming fate. Corneille's prison monologues dramatize the tension between the prisoners' abstract trust in justice and their physical, embodied experience of imprisonment, thus unearthing a new side to these early Cornelian heroes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British Orthopaedic Association's Standards for Trauma and Orthopaedics outline the essential clinical standards for spinal clearance and management of spinal cord injury in the acute trauma patient. From initial presentation in the hospital setting to long-term rehabilitation, the recommendations for clinical assessment, imaging, treatment priorities and the role of trauma networks are summarised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the passage of Thailand's landmark universal healthcare (UHC) policy? In separate contributions, Selway and Harris emphasized the role of electoral rules and political parties, on one hand, and "professional movements" of developmentally minded state bureaucrats on the other. Which is correct? In this article, Selway and Harris respond to each other's work. While Selway agrees that the actions of the professional movement constitute an underappreciated necessary condition for universal healthcare in Thailand, he argues that Harris overstates the role of the movement in implementation. Harris defends his position and maintains that an institution-focused account is insufficient, arguing that the actions of Thailand's Rural Doctors' Movement not only explain universal healthcare but also gave rise to the very electoral rule changes that Selway argues were so critical to facilitating universal coverage. Selway responds to these criticisms, and the two researchers jointly consider implications for causation, qualitative research, and policymaking theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addiction to nicotine is extremely challenging to overcome, and the intense craving for the next cigarette often leads to relapse in smokers who wish to quit. To dampen the urges of craving and inhibit unwanted behaviour, smokers must harness cognitive control, which is itself impaired in addiction. It is likely that craving may interact with cognitive control, and the present study sought to test the specificity of such interactions. To this end, data from 24 smokers were gathered using EEG and behavioural measures in a craving session (following a three‐hour nicotine abstention period) and a non‐craving session (having just smoked). In both sessions, participants performed a task probing various facets of cognitive control (response inhibition, task switching and conflict processing). Results showed that craving smokers were less flexible with the implementation of cognitive control, with demands of task switching and incongruency yielding greater deficits under conditions of craving. Importantly, inhibitory control was not affected by craving, suggesting that the interactions of craving and cognitive control are selective. Together, these results provide evidence that smokers already exhibit specific control‐related deficits after brief nicotine deprivation. This disruption of cognitive control while craving may help to explain why abstinence is so difficult to maintain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the politics of agenda setting and policy adoption operate in the arena of healthcare reform in the industrializing world? Literature on the twenty‐first‐century developmental state emphasizes the role of democratic competition and civil society in causing political parties to take up new agendas, while power resources theory stresses the role of left‐wing political parties and labor unions in policy adoption. Yet, core tenets of these theories have not been considered extensively in light of dynamics in the industrializing world. This article examines the politics of policy adoption in countries that have recently aimed to provide healthcare access and financial protection to the poor and people in the informal sector in Mexico and Turkey. In line with literature on the twenty‐first‐century developmental state, we find democratic competition to play an important role in causing political parties to take up new agendas. However, examination of the cases illuminates surprising dynamics that challenge important elements of sociological theory: right‐leaning political parties played important roles in adoption, while labor unions and left‐wing parties oppose reform in the cases. Public health‐minded physicians leading change teams played important roles in agenda setting and leading the process of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objects that promise rewards are prioritized for visual selection. The way this prioritization shapes sensory processing in visual cortex, however, is debated. It has been suggested that rewards motivate stronger attentional focusing, resulting in a modulation of sensory selection in early visual cortex. An open question is whether those reward-driven modulations would be independent of similar modulations indexing the selection of attended features that are not associated with reward. Here, we use magnetoencephalography in human observers to investigate whether the modulations indexing global color-based selection in visual cortex are separable for target- and (monetary) reward-defining colors. To assess the underlying global color-based activity modulation, we compare the event-related magnetic field response elicited by a color probe in the unattended hemifield drawn either in the target color, the reward color, both colors, or a neutral task-irrelevant color. To test whether target and reward relevance trigger separable modulations, we manipulate attention demands on target selection while keeping reward-defining experimental parameters constant. Replicating previous observations, we find that reward and target relevance produce almost indistinguishable gain modulations in ventral extratriate cortex contralateral to the unattended color probe. Importantly, increasing attention demands on target discrimination increases the response to the target-defining color, whereas the response to the rewarded color remains largely unchanged. These observations indicate that, although task relevance and reward influence the very same feature-selective area in extrastriate visual cortex, the associated modulations are largely independent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite burgeoning research on collaboration, the preference and choice of public managers to partner with other public-sector institutions versus private-sector organizations has received comparatively little attention. This study proposes that public managers are inclined to partner with other government agencies, i.e., within their “comfort zone,” and presents a model to explain when they may go beyond the comfort zone to collaborate with private establishments. Using an embedded case study design, this study examines how the professional background of the manager, characteristics of the government organization, and the “market” of potential partners influence the reported incidence of collaboration with nongovernmental actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the complex relationship between fame, glory, and death through the case of Corneille’s tragedy Horace (1640). Horace eagerly welcomes the chance to fight — and probably die — in a brutal combat against his brothers-in-law, believing that he is being offered a unique opportunity to show his valour and fortitude to his contemporaries and to secure his glorious posthumous ‘immortality’. Yet, having emerged triumphant, Horace proves to be strangely ill at ease with a life of fame. He recognizes that public acclaim is precarious, and that he may never again be offered the chance to match his moment of glory. Horace fears a post-heroic life of compromise; as he later explains, he would rather have died straight after the combat so as to preserve his glory forever in a single act. Glory, he learns, involves a complex interaction between the hero, his dazzled and expectant public, and a wilful fate that may never again allow him the opportunity to prove his heroism. By outliving his single moment of glory, Horace thus leaves his reputation at the mercy of posterity — a posterity in which Corneille’s tragedy plays its own complex role, and in which survival proves more tragic than death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the title hero never sets foot onstage during the play, Corneille’s tragedyLa Mort de Pompée(1643) offers one of the author’s most extensive and gruesome engagements with the corporeality of death. Having been led into a trap set by the cowardly Egyptian king Ptolomée, the Roman military hero Pompée is cruelly assassinated early in the play; his dead body is then decapitated, and then dumped into the sea, while his head is triumphantly presented to his horrified military rival César. Although, as I demonstrate, a vocabulary of vileness recurs throughout the play in words such as ‘vil’, ‘bas’, and ‘abject’, it is not — as we might expect — Pompée’s mutilated corpse that is depicted in such terms. Paradoxically, the body itself retains a certain moral (if not physical) integrity; both Pompée’s head and trunk serve as touchstones for the nobility or villainy of those who encounter them. For the nobler characters, Pompée’s corpse evokes the grandeur of his heroic past. Conversely, the stain of vileness and villainy is displaced from the corpse itself onto Pompée’s cruel assassins and the craven king who authorized the murder — those who prove too base to recognize the true horror of their deeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The Academic Clinical Fellowship (ACF) was introduced to support the early career clinical and research training of potential future clinical academics in England. The driver for the model was concern about falling numbers of clinical academic trainees. This study examines the impact of the ACF model, over its first 10 years, in developing clinical academic careers by tracking the progression of ACF trainees. Design Retrospective analysis of National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) ACF career progression. This was performed using mixed methods including routine data collections of career destination, analysis of application rates to doctoral level fellowships and supplemented by survey information that captured the perceived benefits and challenges from previous ACFs and their current career activities.Participants 1239 NIHR ACFs who completed or left their posts between 2006 and March 2015. Results ACFs are perceived by the candidate population as attractive posts, with high numbers of applications leading to high fill rates. Balancing clinical and academic commitments is one of the reported challenges when completing an ACF. We have found that undertaking an ACF was shown to increase the likelihood of securing an externally funded doctoral training award and the vast majority of ACFs move into academic roles, with many completing PhDs. Previous ACFs continue to show positive career progression, predominantly in translational and clinical research. The knowledge acquired during the ACF continues to be useful in subsequent roles and trainees would recommend the scheme to others. Conclusions The NIHR ACF scheme is successful as part of an integrated training pathway in developing careers in academic medicine and dentistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of contemporary scholarship on French playwright Pierre Corneille. Writings about Corneille by scholars including Serge Doubrovsky, Harold Bloom, and Marie-Odile Sweetser are considered. His canon of works, which includes including the plays "Le Cid," "Horace," and "Cinna," is explored.

It has been suggested that over the course of an addiction, addiction-related stimuli become highly salient in the environment, thereby capturing an addict's attention. To assess these effects neurally in smokers, and how they interact with craving, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) in two sessions: one in which participants had just smoked (non-craving), and one in which they had abstained from smoking for 3 h (craving). In both sessions, participants performed a visual-search task in which two colored squares were presented to the left and right of fixation, with one color being the target to which they should shift attention and discriminate the locations of two missing corners. Task-irrelevant images, both smoking-related and non-smoking-related, were embedded in both squares, enabling the shift of spatial attention to the target to be examined as a function of the addiction-related image being present or absent in the target, the distractor, or both. Behaviorally, participants were slower to respond to targets containing a smoking-related image. Furthermore, when the target contained a smoking-related image, the neural responses indicated that attention had been shifted less strongly to the target; when the distractor contained a smoking-related image, the shift of attention to the contralateral target was stronger. These effects occurred independently of craving and suggest that participants were actively avoiding the smoking-related images. Together, these results provide an electrophysiological dissociation between addiction-related visual-stimulus processing and the neural activity associated with craving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many smokers, the motivational state of craving is a central feature of their dependence on nicotine, and is often at odds with a general desire to quit. How this desire to quit may influence the craving for a cigarette, however, is unclear. In the current study, we manipulated the level of craving in 24 regular smokers, and recorded EEG measures of brain activity during a rare target detection task utilizing addiction-unrelated stimuli. In response to the non-targets, we observed that smokers wanting to quit showed an enhanced late frontal activation when they were craving vs. not craving, whereas smokers not wanting to quit showed the opposite pattern of activity. A dissociation was also present in the target-related P300 response as a function of craving and desire to quit, with smokers who did not want to quit processing targets differentially between the states of craving and non-craving. The data suggest that distinct top-down control mechanisms during craving may be implemented by people who wish to quit smoking, as compared to those who do not wish to quit. This pattern of findings establishes this ERP activity as a potential biomarker that may help to differentiate people who want to quit their addiction from those who wish to continue to use their substance of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Particulate bis[1-(hydroxy-κO)-2(1H)-pyridinethionato-κS2]-(T-4)-zinc (zinc pyrithione; ZPT) in the diameter range 0.5–0.7 µm is a US FDA-approved anti-dandruff active widely used in anti-dandruff shampoos. A nanoparticulate form of ZPT is expected to exhibit a higher activity, be distributed more effectively on the scalp, require less thickening agent in the shampoo formulation to ensure its stability against settling than the standard form of ZPT, and would enable clear anti-dandruff shampoo formulations. We demonstrate, for the first time, that a green, mechanochemical nanoparticle synthesis process can be used to prepare nanoparticulate ZPT from zinc chloride and sodium pyrithione monohydrate. Both a Reeves attrition mill and a Retsch MixerMill were found to be effective tools for delivering the mechanical energy needed for the conversion. The infrared spectra and X-ray powder diffraction patterns for the products correspond to those for the known desired material. Transmission electron microscopic analysis indicates that ZPT nanoparticles with primary particle diameters in the range of 20–200 nm (mean diameters of 65–100 nm) can be obtained via this method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Polymer-derived ceramic coil springs were manufactured by thermoplastic coiling of extruded filaments. Feedstocks for extrusion were processed from polymethylsilsesquioxane loaded with 34 vol% FeSiCr (reactive filler) and 16 vol% Si3N4 (inert filler). The pyrolytic conversion into a composite residue, the surface reactions, and the mechanical properties were analyzed. Annealing the extruded spring preforms in a reactive nitrogen atmosphere at 1300 °C resulted in the formation of a surface reaction zone with a thickness <10 μm where nitridation reaction products are likely to heal cracks and pores. The as-pyrolyzed ceramic springs (without surface machining) were loaded in compression. Ceramic coil springs with a filament diameter of 2.5 mm were characterized by a spring constant of 14.3 N mm−1 and attained a fracture stress of 187 ± 40 MPa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally speaking, deaths in tragedy involve murder or suicide. This article brings together a handful of disparate cases, from within Corneille's dramatic work, of deaths that do not fit into this typical tragic schema. Such deaths held something of a fascination for Corneille throughout his career: between his comedy L'Illusion comique (1635) and his swansong tragedy Suréna (1674), four of his female characters die of a broken heart, and one man is struck down by a lethal haemorrhage. Although these '(un)natural deaths' clearly compromise vraisemblance, the very backbone of seventeenth-century dramaturgy, Corneille is also keen to harness their potential benefits as a source of dramatic, ethical, or emotional effect. This article traces the various techniques that Corneille adopts in order to integrate such causally problematic deaths into his plays. As I argue, although Corneille never settles for a single strategy (sometimes refusing to re-use even techniques he deems successful), he increasingly tends to draw on his rhetorical skills to 'prepare' these potentially awkward deaths on a thematic or poetic level. This becomes most poignantly clear at the end of his final tragedy Suréna, which reworks elements of his earlier '(un)natural deaths' to unexpectedly elegiac effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting one's own errors and appropriately correcting behavior are crucial for efficient goal-directed performance. A correlate of rapid evaluation of behavioral outcomes is the error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) which emerges at the time of the erroneous response over frontal brain areas. However, whether the error monitoring system's ability to distinguish between errors and correct responses at this early time point is a necessary precondition for the subsequent emergence of error awareness remains unclear. The present study investigated this question using error-related brain activity and vocal error signaling responses in seven human patients with lesions in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and adjoining ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while they performed a flanker task. The difference between errors and correct responses was severely attenuated in these patients indicating impaired rapid error monitong, but they showed no impairment in error signaling. However, impaired rapid error monitoring coincided with a failure to increase response accuracy on trials following errors. These results demonstrate that the error monitoring system's ability to distinguish between errors and correct responses at the time of the response is crucial for adaptive post-error adjustments, but not a necessary precondition for error awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship examining political contestation in Thailand has emphasised concepts such as “network monarchy,” while pointing to the populism and enduring political influence of Thaksin Shinawatra. While this descriptive work has helped shed light on the architecture of governance in Thailand, it has not been embedded in a broader theoretical approach that might help to train our attention on other powerful actors that play important roles in shaping Thailand’s political and institutional landscape. In this article, I outline one such approach and advance the term “autonomous political networks,” to refer to collections of people who share strong value commitments and political goals and who operate in the space between the country’s dominant political institutions – often straddling positions in the state and civil society simultaneously. This theoretical discussion is grounded empirically in a description of one such network whose power is derived from sources other than electoral legitimacy or long-standing historical tradition. The article discusses the enormous influence this network has exercised in reshaping Thailand’s political order, all while remaining largely invisible to the public eye. It suggests the need to use this approach to elaborate other hidden political networks that play important roles in governance in Thailand and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of “regulatory capture” is typically used to describe the take over of state agencies by outside interest groups that seek to weaken regulation and advance the agendas of interest groups through control over state policy levers. This concept can be contrasted with that of “developmental capture” of state agencies by networks of reformist bureaucrats within the state who seek to promote inclusive state social and developmental policies of benefit to the broader populace. Building on work that has pointed to instances in which state bureaucrats act autonomously from societal and political pressures, this article argues that existing explanations are insufficient for explaining Thailand's universal health care policy. It points to the critical role played by a network of bureaucrats within the state who strategically mobilized resources in the bureaucracy, political parties, civil society, and international organizations to institutionalize universal health care in the face of broader professional dissent, political uncertainty, and international pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]