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Analysis of the link between the Soviet occupation of East Germany and internal resistance within the German Democratic Republic reveals that ongoing payment of reparations by East Germans out of local production—via the Soviet’s ownership of prominent local companies—affected both the incidence and the intensity of unrest at the precinct level during the uprising of June 17, 1953. This result is robust when controlling for variation in the presence of Soviet military bases and deaths in Soviet nkvd Special Camps, as well as a host of regional factors potentially correlated with differences in unrest.

We examine how the decision‐making of political elites respond to an imminent external threat to the existence of the state in times of war. To do so, we exploit exogeneous variation in exposure to battle deaths and bombing raids to estimate the effect of variation in the intensity of war on the probability that individuals charged with treason and/or high treason in Nazi Germany received the death sentence. A doubling of the number of military fatalities as well as bombing raids in the same week in which a defendant was sentenced increased the likelihood of receiving the death penalty by about 10 percentage points. (JEL K14, N44)

Objective This study examined how well healthcare providers perceive and understand their patients' health beliefs and values compared to patients' actual beliefs, and to determine if communication relationships maybe improved as a result of healthcare providers' understanding of their patients' illness from their perspective. Methods A total of 61 participants (7 healthcare providers and 54 patients) were enrolled in the study. Healthcare providers and patients individually completed survey instruments and each participated in a structured focus group. Results Healthcare provider and patient differences revealed that patients perceived greater meaning of their illness (p = 0.038), and a greater preference for partnership (p = 0.026) compared to providers. The three qualitative themes most important for understanding patients' health beliefs and values as perceived by healthcare providers were education, trust, and culture. Educating patients was perceived as having the greatest impact and also the easiest method to implement to foster providers' understanding, with at least one patient focus group in agreement of same. Likewise, three themes were derived from patients' perspectives as relatively more important in understanding providers' beliefs and values; bidirectional communication, comprehensive treatment, and discipline. Overwhelmingly, bidirectional communication was perceived as a critical factor as having the greatest impact and may also be easiest to implement according to these patients. Conclusion When patients and healthcare providers listen and communicate with each other, they are likely to develop a shared understanding that may improve future decision making and quality of care patients receive.

We examine the role of judicial policy preferences in influencing whether judges in Nazi Germany sentenced defendants charged with serious political offences to death. We find that judicial policy preferences, measured by the depth of the ideological commitment of the judge to the Nazi Party worldview, were an important determinant of whether judges imposed the death sentence. Judges more committed to the Nazi Party were more likely to impose the death sentence on defendants belonging to organised political opposition groups, those accused of violent resistance and those with characteristics to which Nazism was intolerant. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The tools of econometric analysis and inferential statistics reveal that senior Nazi-era judges in pre-war Germany exhibited statistically significant levels of discretion in their sentencing of individuals convicted of high treason or treason. In fact, some of these judges, though appointed to the People’s Court to serve the Nazi state, were inclined to show relative leniency, within certain political limits, when taking into account the characteristics, backgrounds, affiliations, actions, and experiences of those whom they convicted. A modicum of judicial autonomy can co-exist with dictatorship so long as it enhances the efficiency of the courts and does not impugn the regime.

This article compares the real GDP per capita of the Cape Colony and Natal between 1861 and 1909 with that of Australia's two most developed colonies, Victoria and New South Wales. Estimates of European and non-European GDP per capita for both South African colonies are also provided. Together, this information allows for the first time an evaluation of the growth performance of these important parts of the South African economy in the colonial era. The article concludes that South African performance in this period was stronger than often assumed and that by the beginning of the twentieth century European South Africans, now more fully integrated into a British World economy, operated at a level of GDP per capita that matched and in some places may have exceeded that of Australians. Non-European South Africans, however, did not share in these same advances.

Background\ud Postmastectomy radiotherapy in patients with four or more positive axillary nodes reduces breast cancer mortality, but its role in patients with one to three involved nodes is controversial. We assessed the effects of postmastectomy radiotherapy on quality of life (QOL) in women with intermediate-risk breast cancer.\ud \ud Methods\ud SUPREMO is an open-label, international, parallel-group, randomised, controlled trial. Women aged 18 years or older with intermediate-risk breast cancer (defined as pT1–2N1; pT3N0; or pT2N0 if also grade III or with lymphovascular invasion) who had undergone mastectomy and, if node positive, axillary surgery, were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive chest wall radiotherapy (50 Gy in 25 fractions or a radiobiologically equivalent dose of 45 Gy in 20 fractions or 40 Gy in 15 fractions) or no radiotherapy. Randomisation was done with permuted blocks of varying block length, and stratified by centre, without masking of patients or investigators. The primary endpoint is 10-year overall survival. Here, we present 2-year results of QOL (a prespecified secondary endpoint). The QOL substudy, open to all UK patients, consists of questionnaires (European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23, Body Image Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS], and EQ-5D-3L) completed before randomisation, and at 1, 2, 5, and 10 years. The prespecified primary outcomes within this QOL substudy were global QOL, fatigue, physical function, chest wall symptoms, shoulder and arm symptoms, body image, and anxiety and depression. Data were analysed by intention to treat, using repeated mixed-effects methods. This trial is registered with the ISRCTN registry, number ISRCTN61145589.\ud \ud Findings\ud Between Aug 4, 2006, and April 29, 2013, 1688 patients were enrolled internationally and randomly assigned to receive chest wall radiotherapy (n=853) or not (n=835). 989 (79%) of 1258 patients from 111 UK centres consented to participate in the QOL substudy (487 in the radiotherapy group and 502 in the no radiotherapy group), of whom 947 (96%) returned the baseline questionnaires and were included in the analysis (radiotherapy, n=471; no radiotherapy, n=476). At up to 2 years, chest wall symptoms were worse in the radiotherapy group than in the no radiotherapy group (mean score 14·1 [SD 15·8] in the radiotherapy group vs 11·6 [14·6] in the no radiotherapy group; effect estimate 2·17, 95% CI 0·40–3·94; p=0·016); however, there was an improvement in both groups between years 1 and 2 (visit effect −1·34, 95% CI −2·36 to −0·31; p=0·010). No differences were seen between treatment groups in arm and shoulder symptoms, body image, fatigue, overall QOL, physical function, or anxiety or depression scores.\ud \ud Interpretation\ud Postmastectomy radiotherapy led to more local (chest wall) symptoms up to 2 years postrandomisation compared with no radiotherapy, but the difference between groups was small. These data will inform shared decision making while we await survival (trial primary endpoint) results.\ud \ud Funding\ud Medical Research Council, European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, Cancer Australia, Dutch Cancer Society, Trustees of Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

This study examined how well healthcare providers perceive and understand their patients' health beliefs and values compared to patients' actual beliefs, and to determine if communication relationships maybe improved as a result of healthcare providers' understanding of their patients' illness from their perspective.A total of 61 participants (7 healthcare providers and 54 patients) were enrolled in the study. Healthcare providers and patients individually completed survey instruments and each participated in a structured focus group.Healthcare provider and patient differences revealed that patients perceived greater meaning of their illness (p = 0.038), and a greater preference for partnership (p = 0.026) compared to providers. The three qualitative themes most important for understanding patients' health beliefs and values as perceived by healthcare providers were education, trust, and culture. Educating patients was perceived as having the greatest impact and also the easiest method to implement to foster providers' understanding, with at least one patient focus group in agreement of same. Likewise, three themes were derived from patients' perspectives as relatively more important in understanding providers' beliefs and values; bidirectional communication, comprehensive treatment, and discipline. Overwhelmingly, bidirectional communication was perceived as a critical factor as having the greatest impact and may also be easiest to implement according to these patients.When patients and healthcare providers listen and communicate with each other, they are likely to develop a shared understanding that may improve future decision making and quality of care patients receive.

Recent literature suggests that there was a marked intensification of consumerism in the Anglophone world in the latter half of the nineteenth century, though little systematic empirical evidence of the phenomenon or its origins has to date been provided. This paper develops an economic model to redress this situation. Using a fixed-effects panel data model, it shows that the enduring racial ties, cultural affinity and sense of connectedness of British emigrants in Australasia, Canada and the US between 1879 and 1913, as evidenced by their remittance flows, were reflected in a strong preference for consuming British products.

This article uses the court records of a sample of individuals, aged between 15 and 62, tried for high treason in Nazi Germany to analyze a rare, real-world prisoner's-dilemma-like scenario that resisters faced once taken into custody: keep quiet and protect their collaborators or turn informant in the hope of obtaining leniency? We find that, although self-interest and defection to the authorities was the norm for most, significant rates of cooperation remained. We also find evidence that the size of the stake, age, education, beliefs, affiliations, and sense of community could play roles in facilitating cooperative behavior.

This article explores whether deregulation of the Australian retail banking sector in the 1980s delivered the enhanced consumer choice that had been promised. Using new data on banking products and their usage, it analyses consumers' ability to select optimal ‘frontier’ products. It concludes that following deregulation of retail banking, product offerings underwent such tumultuous change that the scope for effective consumer choice was severely constrained. While there were improvements towards the end of the period, progress was not assisted by the banks' strategy of proliferating and re-bundling products. Consequently, the anticipated improvements to consumer choice were slow to arrive.

Anecdotal reports suggest that application of a cool device to the back of the neck at the onset of a hot flush can afford symptomatic relief. The effects of a novel handheld mechanical cooling device in a population of perimenopausal women with moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms were evaluated.In this randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled pilot study, 40 perimenopausal women experiencing ≥ 7 moderate-to-severe hot flushes per day were recruited at a single university site. Women were randomized to the active (n = 20) or sham (n = 20) device, which was applied to the back of the neck with each hot flush over the 4-week treatment period. Hot flush scores were calculated based on frequency and severity of symptoms. The Carpenter Hot Flash Related Daily Interference Scale and Zung Anxiety Scale were used to evaluate impact on quality of life. At study end, participants completed an open-ended questionnaire to assess the degree of unblinding and overall subjective improvement in symptoms with use of the device.No statistically significant differences were observed between the effects of the active and sham device. However, thematic analysis of the open-ended questionnaire revealed that 12/17 women (70.6%) in the active group, compared to 4/18 (22.2%) women in the sham group felt the device provided some symptomatic relief.Although the majority of women using the active device acknowledged that its cooling effect afforded a degree of symptomatic relief, the symptom scores chosen for this pilot study did not reflect a beneficial effect.

Since the end of the Second World War, historical research on German and Austrian resistance has steadily expanded, deepened and enrichened our understanding of the phenomenon. Like all healthy fields of research, though, mysteries and gaps not only persist but are constantly being opened up. This book has sought to add to that accumulated knowledge by attempting to tease further insights from the archives with quantitative analysis. Its results have both cast light on a number of important existing debates and identified new areas of study that call for greater research. The various threads discovered in earlier chapters are brought together in this concluding chapter, and some of the key implications of our findings for the understanding of serious resistance activities in Nazi Germany are discussed. One new thing that emerges from this analysis is a framework that for the first time allows the objective evaluation of the impact of serious resistance to be made, an approach which with simple modifications could be easily extended to the study of dissent, opposition and nonconformity.

We study the effect of legally irrelevant events on the sentencing outcomes of around 2,500 individual defendants, heard before the People's Court in Nazi Germany. Our analysis exploits exogeneous variation in battle deaths and estimates their effect on the likelihood of receiving the death penalty. According to our results, higher German fatalities on the battlefield systematically increased the chances of receiving the death penalty. We show that decisions by experienced judges were less affected by battle deaths, while judges who were more ideologically committed to the regime were more likely to impose the death penalty in response to hearing news of higher German fatalities. Our results are not driven by particular types of offenses or defendants, time periods, or changes in arrest patterns and are robust to the use of major bombing raids of German cities instead of battle deaths. We also find some evidence that victories of the German national soccer team decreased the chances of capital punishment.

This chapter provides an overview of some of the key personal and environmental characteristics of those who participated in serious resistance to the Nazi regime. It reminds us that as a group they were more than just the politics to which they subscribed. Moreover, the chapter describes a range of interesting phenomena: inter alia, the steady aging of resisters over the course of the regime, especially during the war; the dominance of blue-collar labour in resistance movements; and the small, though disproportionate, contribution of foreigners, the stateless and people of partial Jewish ancestry in the struggle to undermine Hitler’s state from within. The chapter also demonstrates the meaningfulness of analysing resistance by stage of life and gender. In particular, its analysis highlights the distinctiveness of two often overlooked types of resistance: juvenile and female.

In this chapter, we turn our attention to another feature of the resister’s story, one that has typically been less scrutinised and certainly is not as well understood: their experience once they had been arrested and entered custody. It was there in the interrogation chambers, cells and court rooms of the Nazi regime that the personal consequences of their actions were to be first painfully brought to bear. The chapter begins with an outline of the nature and structure of the Nazi legal system and how it evolved to deal with the most serious of political crimes it confronted: treason and high treason. It then moves on to explore aspects of the reality of the resister’s actual engagement with that system. In particular, the chapter considers the length of time it took to get from arrest to sentence, the type of charges resisters were likely to face, the verdicts they could expect, the determinants of the sentence they were ultimately to receive and what role, if any, the discretion of the judge presiding over the case would play in that process. The chapter also investigates a critical choice that all resisters in custody, irrespective of their background or motivations, had to make, a choice that would directly impact their and their co-defendants’ fate: should they cooperate with the authorities or not?

Despite the personal dangers involved, a remarkable number of Germans and Austrians chose to resist the Nazi regime. The aim of this chapter is to provide a succinct, yet comprehensive, overview of the myriad groups and organisations of differing political, religious and ethnic persuasions that took the fateful decision to resist the regime. The chapter identifies precisely when, where and with what frequency each of these groups carried out their serious resistance. While the chapter captures and highlights the amazing diversity of political and spiritual beliefs which provided the organisational context for, and motivation to, those who chose to engage in serious resistance, it also identifies the enduring importance of certain parties and groups – in particular, the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) in Germany and the Communist Party of Austria (Kommunistische Partei Osterreichs or KPO) and Catholic-Conservative-Legitimist organisations in Austria – in that struggle to bring down Hitler’s regime from within.

In this chapter, our analysis of serious internal resistance to Hitler’s regime begins with an examination of the overall structure and composition of that resistance from the inception of Nazi rule in January 1933 through to the collapse of the German legal system in early 1945. The chapter seeks to answer two fundamental questions in particular, one temporal and one geographic: namely, how did the levels of serious resistance change across time and what regions were most active in this resistance? Along the way, a number of secondary issues are also considered: inter alia, can a distinct periodisation of resistance be identified, how did the different phases of the war impact resistance activities, did the intensity of such activities in any location merely reflect its population size, and is it more appropriate to talk of the commonality or distinctiveness of regional resistance experiences? The answers to such questions gleaned from quantitative analyses of the available data on treason, and high treason shed new light on, and challenge aspects of, our understanding of the path of serious resistance within Nazi Germany. The chapter offers a new periodisation of serious resistance in Nazi Germany.

The yeast Candida albicans, a commensal colonizer and occasional pathogen of humans, has a rudimentary mating ability. However, mating is a cumbersome process that has never been observed outside the laboratory, and the population structure of the species is predominantly clonal. Here we discuss recent findings that indicate that mating ability is under selection in C. albicans, i.e. that it is a biologically relevant process. C. albicans strains can only mate after they have sustained genetic damage. We propose that the rescue of such damaged strains by mating may be the primary reason why mating ability is under selection.

The yeast Candida albicans can mate. However, in the natural environment mating may generate progeny (fusants) fitter than clonal lineages too rarely to render mating biologically significant: C. albicans has never been observed to mate in its natural environment, the human host, and the population structure of the species is largely clonal. It seems incapable of meiosis, and most isolates are diploid and carry both mating-type-like (MTL) locus alleles, preventing mating. Only chromosome loss or localized loss of heterozygosity can generate mating-competent cells, and recombination of parental alleles is limited. To determine if mating is a biologically significant process, we investigated if mating is under selection. The ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous mutations in mating genes and the frequency of mutations abolishing mating indicated that mating is under selection. The MTL locus is located on chromosome 5, and when we induced chromosome 5 loss in 10 clinical isolates, most of the resulting MTL-homozygotes could mate with each other, producing fusants. In laboratory culture, a novel environment favoring novel genotypes, some fusants grew faster than their parents, in which loss of heterozygosity had reduced growth rates, and also faster than their MTL-heterozygous ancestors—albeit often only after serial propagation. In a small number of experiments in which co-inoculation of an oral colonization model with MTL-homozygotes yielded small numbers of fusants, their numbers declined over time relative to those of the parents. Overall, our results indicate that mating generates genotypes superior to existing MTL-heterozygotes often enough to be under selection.

Objective: The primary objective of this clinical practice guideline is to provide gynaecologists with an algorithm and evidence to guide the diagnosis and management of endometrial polyps., Target Population: All patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic endometrial polyps., Options: Options for management of endometrial polyps include expectant, medical, and surgical management. These will depend on symptoms, risks for malignancy, and patient choice., Outcomes: Outcomes include resolution of symptoms, histopathological diagnosis, and complete removal of the polyp., Benefits, Harms, and Costs: The implementation of this guideline aims to benefit patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic endometrial polyps and provide physicians with an evidence-based approach toward diagnosis and management (including expectant, medical, and surgical management) of polyps., Evidence: The following search terms were entered into PubMed/Medline and Cochrane: endometrial polyps, polyps, endometrial thickening, abnormal uterine bleeding, postmenopausal bleeding, endometrial hyperplasia, endometrial cancer, hormonal therapy, female infertility. All articles were included in the literature search up to 2021 and the following study types were included: randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, observational studies, and case reports. Additional publications were identified from the bibliographies of these articles. Only English-language articles were reviewed., Validation Methods: The authors rated the quality of evidence and strength of recommendations using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. See Appendix A (Tables A1 for definitions and A2 for interpretations of strong and weak recommendations)., Intended Audience: Gynaecologists, family physicians, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, medical students, and residents and fellows., Tweetable Abstract: Uterine polyps are common and can cause abnormal bleeding, infertility, or bleeding after menopause. If patients don't experience symptoms, treatment is often not necessary. Polyps can be treated with medication but often a surgery will be necessary., Summary Statements: RECOMMENDATIONS., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)