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When World War II ended Chiang Kai-shek seemed at the height of his power-the leader of Nationalist China, one of the victorious Allied Powers in 1945 and with the financial backing of the US. Yet less than four years later, he lost the China's civil war against the communists. Offering an insightful chronological treatment of the years 1944–1949, Parks Coble addresses why Chiang was unable to win the war and control hyperinflation. Using newly available archival sources, he reveals the critical weakness of Chiang's style of governing, the fundamental structural flaws in the Nationalist government, bitter personal rivalries and Chiang's personal lack of interest in finance. This major work of revisionist scholarship will engage all those interested in the shaping of twentieth-century history.

Background: Previous research has suggested that patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) are not offered adequate risk factor modification, despite their high cardiovascular risk. The aim of this study was to assess the cardiovascular profiles of patients with PAD and quantify the survival benefits of target-based risk factor modification. Methods: The Vascular and Endovascular Research Network (VERN) prospectively collected cardiovascular profiles of patients with PAD from ten UK vascular centres (April to June 2018) to assess practice against UK and European goal-directed best medical therapy guidelines. Risk and benefits of risk factor control were estimated using the SMART-REACH model, a validated cardiovascular prediction tool for patients with PAD. Results: Some 440 patients (mean(s.d.) age 70(11) years, 24·8 per cent women) were included in the study. Mean(s.d.) cholesterol (4·3(1·2) mmol/l) and LDL-cholesterol (2·7(1·1) mmol/l) levels were above recommended targets; 319 patients (72·5 per cent) were hypertensive and 343 (78·0 per cent) were active smokers. Only 11·1 per cent of patients were prescribed high-dose statin therapy and 39·1 per cent an antithrombotic agent. The median calculated risk of a major cardiovascular event over 10 years was 53 (i.q.r. 44–62) per cent. Controlling all modifiable cardiovascular risk factors based on UK and European guidance targets (LDL-cholesterol less than 2 mmol/l, systolic BP under 140 mmHg, smoking cessation, antiplatelet therapy) would lead to an absolute risk reduction of the median 10-year cardiovascular risk by 29 (20–38) per cent with 6·3 (4·0–9·3) cardiovascular disease-free years gained. Conclusion: The medical management of patients with PAD in this secondary care cohort was suboptimal. Controlling modifiable risk factors to guideline-based targets would confer significant patient benefit.

Background: Previous research suggests patients with Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) are not offered adequate risk-factor modification, despite their high cardiovascular risk. We aimed to assess the cardiovascular profiles of patients with PAD in the UK and quantify the survival benefits of target-based risk-factor modification. Methods: The Vascular and Endovascular Research Network (VERN) prospectively collected cardiovascular profiles of patients with PAD from ten UK vascular centres (April - June 2018) to assess practice against UK and European goal-directed BMT guidelines. Risk and benefits of risk-factor control were estimated using the SMART-REACH model, a validated cardiovascular prediction tool for patients with PAD. Results: Overall, 440 patients (mean age: 70±11 years, 24% female) were included. Mean cholesterol (4.3±1.2 mmol/L) and LDL (2.7±1.1 mmol/L) levels were above recommended levels; 319 (73%) patients were hypertensive and 343 (78%) were smokers. Only 12% of patients were prescribed high-dose statin therapy and 39% an antithrombotic agent. The median risk of a major cardiovascular event over 10-years was 53% [Interquartile Range (IQR): 44-62%]. Controlling all modifiable cardiovascular risk-factors based on UK and European guidance targets (LDL

Background: Evidence-based international expert consensus regarding anaesthetic practice in hip/knee arthroplasty surgery is needed for improved healthcare outcomes. Methods: The International Consensus on Anaesthesia-Related Outcomes after Surgery group (ICAROS) systematic review, including randomised controlled and observational studies comparing neuraxial to general anaesthesia regarding major complications, including mortality, cardiac, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, renal, genitourinary, thromboembolic, neurological, infectious, and bleeding complications. Medline, PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library including Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, NHS Economic Evaluation Database, from 1946 to May 17, 2018 were queried. Meta-analysis and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach was utilised to assess evidence quality and to develop recommendations. Results: The analysis of 94 studies revealed that neuraxial anaesthesia was associated with lower odds or no difference in virtually all reported complications, except for urinary retention. Excerpt of complications for neuraxial vs general anaesthesia in hip/knee arthroplasty, respectively: mortality odds ratio (OR): 0.67, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.57–0.80/OR: 0.83, 95% CI: 0.60–1.15; pulmonary OR: 0.65, 95% CI: 0.52–0.80/OR: 0.69, 95% CI: 0.58–0.81; acute renal failure OR: 0.69, 95% CI: 0.59–0.81/OR: 0.73, 95% CI: 0.65–0.82; deep venous thrombosis OR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.42–0.65/OR: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.64–0.93; infections OR: 0.73, 95% CI: 0.67–0.79/OR: 0.80, 95% CI: 0.76–0.85; and blood transfusion OR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.82–0.89/OR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.82–0.87. Conclusions: Recommendation: primary neuraxial anaesthesia is preferred for knee arthroplasty, given several positive postoperative outcome benefits; evidence level: low, weak recommendation. Recommendation: neuraxial anaesthesia is recommended for hip arthroplasty given associated outcome benefits; evidence level: moderate-low, strong recommendation. Based on current evidence, the consensus group recommends neuraxial over general anaesthesia for hip/knee arthroplasty. Trial registry number: PROSPERO CRD42018099935. © 2019 British Journal of Anaesthesia

Trabajo presentado en el 10 Meeting Cities on Volcanoes, celebrado en Nápoles (Italia), del 2 al 7 de septiembre de 2018

Background Infants born

This dissertation explores the combination of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) results with field data to provide additional constraints on the processes controlling deformation signals observed at Galeras volcano (Colombia) and Santorini volcano (Greece). InSAR measurements during 2007-2008 at Galeras reveal a subsidence signal on its northeast flank. I model InSAR and gravity data to determine the best-fit parameters for the subsidence source and suggest this signal was caused by deflation of the magma chamber associated with the January 2008 eruption. In January 2011, Santorini volcano entered a period of unrest characterised by earthquake swarms and caldera-wide uplift. I analyse satellite data over a period incorporating both the preceding phase of quiescence (1993-2010) and the phase of unrest (2011-2012). A subsidence signal is confirmed on the intra-caldera island of Nea Kameni during 1993-2010. I investigate several possible scenarios for its source, with my preferred explanation being a combination of cooling and contraction of historic lava flows, and loading from these flows inducing relaxation of the substrate. I also use a joint InSAR/GPS inversion technique to model the caldera-wide uplift observed during 2011-2012. I determine the optimal parameters for the deformation source and the temporal variation in volume change within the shallow magma chamber. The renewed activity offered an opportunity to observe how soil-gas emissions would respond to an influx of magma to a shallow reservoir. I employ a new approach (222Rn-δ13C systematics) to identify and quantify the source of diffuse degassing at Santorini during the period of unrest. Finally, I present a new high-resolution merged LiDAR-Bathymetry grid, enabling detailed mapping of both onshore and offshore historic lava flows emplaced in the centre of Santorini caldera. Updated lava volumes provide new extrusion rate estimates and a means of estimating both the size and duration of future dome-building eruptions at Santorini.

Trabajo presentado en el 9ª Asamblea Hispano Portuguesa de Geodesia y Geofísica, celebrada en Madrid (España), del 28 al 30 de junio de 2016, [ES] La isla volcánica de El Hierro es la isla más joven del archipiélago canario. Se asienta sobre un fondo marino de más de 3600 m de profundidad y se eleva hasta los 1502 m sobre el nivel del mar. Hasta el año 2011 no se tenía constancia de ninguna erupción histórica en la isla. Sin embargo, en julio del año 2011 comenzó en el centro de la isla un intenso enjambre sísmico que dio lugar el 10 de octubre de 2011 a una erupción submarina a 2 km al sur de la isla. Dicha erupción se prolongó durante más de cinco meses y se dio oficialmente por terminada el 5 de marzo de 2012. Sin embargo, el final de la erupción submarina no fue el final de la actividad volcánica en la isla. Entre julio de 2012 y marzo de 2014 se produjeron seis intrusiones magmáticas a unos 15-20 km de profundidad. Datos GPS e imágenes radar de los satélites RADARSAT-2 y COSMO-SkyMed han permitido determinar la deformación del terreno producida por cada una de estas intrusiones magmáticas. Además, dichos conjuntos de datos se han invertido para modelizar los parámetros de la fuente volcánica (localización, geometría, cambio de volumen/presión) que mejor definen estas intrusiones desde el punto de vista geodésico, dando información que nos ayuda a comprender cómo esta joven isla volcánica intraplaca va creciendo poco a poco., [EN] The volcanic island of El Hierro is the youngest island of the Canary archipelago. El Hierro rises from around 3600 m depth to a maximum altitude of 1502 m above sea level. Until 2011 there was no evidence of any historical eruption on the island. However, on July 2011 an intense seismic swarm began in the middle of the island that resulted on 10th October 2011 in a submarine eruption only 2 km south of the island. The eruption lasted for more than five months and was officially ended on 5th March 2012. However, the end of the submarine eruption was not the end of volcanic activity on the island. Between July 2012 and March 2014 six magmatic intrusions have occurred at 15-20 km depth. GPS data and SAR images of the RADARSAT-2 and COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been used to determine the surface deformation produced by each of these magmatic intrusions. In addition, these data sets have been inverted to determine the optimal source parameters (location, geometry, volume/pressure change) that best define these magmatic intrusions from the geodetic point of view, giving information that helps us to understand how this young intraplate volcanic island is slowly growing.

In today's China, public memory of the War of Resistance against Japan, 1937–1945, is more visible than ever. Museums, movies, television programmes, and commemorations focus heavily on the victimization of the Chinese people at the hands of the Japanese invaders. Japanese atrocities, particularly the Nanjing Massacre, are at the centre of much of this remembering. But what of the wartime period? How did journalists and writers discuss Japanese atrocities? This paper finds that most wartime writing stressed the theme of ‘heroic resistance’ by the Chinese rather than China's victimization at the hands of Japanese. Exceptions to this approach included efforts to publicize Japan's action to Western audiences in the hope of gaining support for China's cause, and a related focus on the bombing of the civilian population by the Japanese. This paper suggests major differences between the current approach to remembering the war and to writing during the war itself.

Japan’s invasion of China in the summer of 1937 dealt a devastating blow to Chinese journalism. Yet despite the hardships, China’s wartime reporters produced a legacy of vivid writing. In the face of a series of major defeats, the journalists attempted to shore up morale and stressed the heroic resistance of Chinese forces. They reported on Japanese atrocities such as the Rape of Nanjing, but not to such an extent that might erode morale. During the Maoist era, the legacy of this war reportage largely faded from a public memory which privileged the revolution. When a “new remembering” of the war emerged in the reform era, the heroic resistance narrative from war reportage dovetailed nicely with the new nationalism of today’s China. But this literature has been less helpful in developing the theme of Chinese victimhood, a key component of the new memory of the war. Finally, memoir literature, so common in most combatant nations, has been problematic in China. Those who remember their war experiences do so through the prism of later traumas, particularly the Cultural Revolution.

According to Cheung, common challenges such as currency depreciation, share market volatility and export competition brought by the financial crisis helped to accelerate economic integration between Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. According to Cheung, these mechanisms pull the island in a different direction - namely, the internationalisation of Taiwan.

In today's China, memory of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 is often a front page issue, a source of diplomatic friction between Beijing and Tokyo. Yet in Mao's era, public memory of this conflict virtually disappeared. Only the role of communist forces under Chairman Mao was commemorated; other memories were consigned to historical oblivion. This article examines the process by which memory of the war re-appeared in the reform era. Because the government has emphasized nationalism, the new memory of the war has stressed a patriotic nationalist narrative of heroic resistance. At the same time, a second major theme has been the emphasis on Japanese atrocities, virtually a “numbers game” in historical writing. Thus despite the voluminous publications which have appeared since the 1980s, the new writing on the war has stressed certain themes while neglecting others.

In reading over the articles by Professors Hao and Chan, I would make several general observations. First, historical studies necessarily reflect the particular time and place in which they are written. In the 1950s, the nations of East Asia, China in particular, were poverty stricken, and no economic miracle was in sight. The Soviet model appeared a viable rival to capitalism as a strategy for economic development. As Yen-p'ing Hao notes in his article, dominant issues of much early scholarship dealt with explaining "China's failure to modernize," the limitations of family firms, and the weaknesses of Chinese entrepreneurship. We have, for instance, Feuerwerker's classic study that discusses the "tardy" nature of Chinese development by focusing on the limitations of the guandu shangban form of business organization.1

This presentation was developed as a teaching module to contribute to the gap of feminist geographic information systems (FGIS) in international development. It summaries recent literature on GIS theory and development and its intersection with critical and feminist theory. There are arguments that GIS lacks the tools to visualize social processes and lacks the representation of marginalized populations. It is labelled as being masculinist in nature by many scholars in social science fields. As a result, there has been a call for feminist GIS which challenges these claims and uses GIS in innovative ways to capture human patterns. CCRA-7 (Gendered Knowledge)

Imperial China was known for its massive water control projects, most famously the Huang (Yellow) River dykes and the Grand Canal. Today's China is now constructing the largest hydroelectric project in human history, the Three Gorges dam. Sandwiched between these two eras was Republican China, when the traditional methods of construction and engineering gave way to new processes grounded in the principles of scientific hydrology and engineering largely developed in the West. In this brief but fascinating study, David A. Pietz examines the efforts of the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek during the Nanjing decade of 1927–1937 to re-shape the Huai River basin. A student of William Kirby, Pietz adopts the Kirby view that one should see 1949 not as an unbridgeable divide between two eras, but find much continuity in the growth of the modern developmental state in China.Pietz has chosen the Huai River basin for his case study primarily because it witnessed the Kuomintang government's largest such project. In addition, the ecology of no other area of China has been more impacted by human action. Although draining over a relatively flat alluvial plain, the Huai was far more stable in ancient times than its northern neighbor, the Huang River, because of a much lower silt content. Yet all changed in 1194 when the Huang broke through its banks and began to flow south into the Huai, radically altering the ecology of north central China. From 1194 until 1855 the Huang River entered the ocean through the old Huai River channel, rendering the Huai a mere tributary. Subsequent imperial governments attempted to contain the Huang River while at the same time stabilizing the Grand Canal, so essential for grain transport from the south.