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Background: Whilst the uniqueness of loneliness and social isolation is now recognised for members of the Armed Forces Community, there is currently a lack of evidence examining these experiences within the Military Widow/er population. Therefore, this scoping review aimed to search and synthesise the current evidence base exploring experiences of loneliness and social isolation in this community. Method: Six databases were searched; ASSIA; CINAHL; ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Global; PsycArticles; Medline; Web of Science. Any article type was included if they focused on UK or international Military Widows and loneliness and social isolation. In the absence of loneliness and social isolation, related aspects were included, for example, social support. Results: A thematic synthesis was completed on the nine eligible papers, where key findings were coded and generated into four themes; Experiences of Loneliness and Social Isolation, The Uniqueness of the Military, Access to Social Support, and The Importance of Peer Support. Conclusions: Evidence supports the need for military-specific support services with peers who recognise the individuals' unique experiences of loneliness and social isolation. None of the available evidence focused specifically on social isolation, however this was often prevalent in the results. All of the studies were carried out in the USA and Israel, with none including the views of widowers. Further evidence is required, particularly relating to a UK-context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Midlife, beginning at 40 years and extending to 65 years, a range that encompasses the late reproductive to late menopausal stages, is a unique time in women's lives, when hormonal and physical changes are often accompanied by psychological and social evolution. Access to sexual health and sexual well-being (SHSW) services, which include the prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, contraception and the support of sexual function, pleasure and safety, is important for the health of midlife women, their relationships and community cohesion. The objective was to use the socio-ecological model to synthesise the barriers and enablers to SHSW services for midlife women in high-income countries. A systematic review of the enablers and barriers to women (including trans-gender and non-binary people) aged 40–65 years accessing SHSW services in high-income countries was undertaken. Four databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science and Google Scholar) were searched for peer-reviewed publications. Findings were thematically extracted and reported in a narrative synthesis. Eighty-one studies were included; a minority specifically set out to study SHSW care for midlife women. The key barriers that emerged were the intersecting disadvantage of under-served groups, poor knowledge, about SHSW, and SHSW services, among women and their healthcare professionals (HCPs), and the over-arching effect of stigma, social connections and psychological factors on access to care. Enablers included intergenerational learning, interdisciplinary and one-stop women-only services, integration of SHSW into other services, peer support programmes, representation of minoritised midlife women working in SHSW, local and free facilities and financial incentives to access services for under-served groups. Efforts are needed to enhance education about SHSW and related services among midlife women and their healthcare providers. This increased education should be leveraged to improve research, public health messaging, interventions, policy development and access to comprehensive services, especially for midlife women from underserved groups. Plain language summary: Sexual health and sexual wellbeing services for midlife women in high income countries Midlife, beginning at 40 years and extending to 65 years, a range that encompasses the late reproductive to late menopausal stages, is a unique time in women's lives. Access to Sexual Health and Sexual Wellbeing (SHSW) services, which include the prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, contraception and the support of sexual function, pleasure and safety, is important for the health of midlife women, their relationships and community cohesion. The objective of this systematic review was to use the socio-ecological model to synthesise the barriers and enablers to SHSW services for midlife women in high income countries. Eighty-one studies were included; a minority specifically set out to study SHSW care for midlife women. The key barriers that emerged were the intersecting disadvantage of under-served groups, poor knowledge, about SHSW, and SHSW services, among women and their HealthCare Professionals (HCPs), and the over-arching effect of stigma, social connections, and psychological factors on access to care. Enablers included intergenerational learning, interdisciplinary and one-stop women-only services, integration of SHSW into other services, peer support programmes, representation of minoritised midlife women working in SHSW, local and free facilities, and financial incentives for under-served groups to access services. The appetite for education about SHSW and SHSW services among midlife women and their HCPs should be capitalised upon, and utilised to improve research, public health messaging, interventions and access to holistic services, particularly for midlife women from under-served groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, each country has adopted different control measures to contrast the epidemic's diffusion. Restrictions to mobility, public transport, and social life in general have been actuated to contain the spread of the pandemic. In this paper, we consider the deterministic SIRD model with delays proposed by Calleri et al., which is improved by adding the vaccinated compartment V (SIRDV model) and considering a time-dependent contact frequency. The three delays take into account the incubation time of the disease, the healing time, and the death time. The aim of this work is to study the effect of the vaccination campaigns in Great Britain (GBR) and Israel (ISR) during the pandemic period. The different restriction periods are included by fitting the contact frequency on real datasets as a piecewise constant function. As expected, the vaccination campaign reduces the amount of deaths and infected people. Furthermore, for the different levels of restriction policy, we find specific values of the contact frequency that can be used to predict the trend of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I consider in this paper the question of balance in popular education between what we can call annunciation and denunciation, inspired by the work of Paulo Freire. By annunciation, I mean the role of love, affirmation, encouragement and profound encounters with otherness; by denunciation, I have in mind the spirit of critique and challenge to the established order of things. In the process, I question the marginalisation of liberation theology in Paulo Freire's work among some radical educators. There has, I suggest, been a sundering of spirituality, and especially religious insight, from rational enquiry in the academic mainstream, which has influenced readings of Freire. Modernity has privileged intellectualism and critical rationality as the only valid way of knowing; matters of faith and varieties of religious experience have correspondingly been privatised.

The choice between protecting friendly soldiers or foreign civilians is a critical strategic dilemma faced in modern war. Prevailing theories suggest that casualties among both groups depress war support in Western democratic societies. Yet we know little about how ordinary citizens balance force protection and civilian casualty avoidance, and whether public opinion differs across Western democracies. Using survey experiments, we test three micro-foundations for what we call individuals' "harm-transfer preferences:" self-interest, perception of soldiers' consent to risk-taking, and nationalism. We find that respondents' perception of soldiers' consent and respondents' nationalism explain individual-level variation in harm-transfer preferences. Moreover, Israeli citizens are significantly more likely than American or British citizens to prefer protecting friendly forces over avoiding foreign civilian casualties. This is associated with higher levels of nationalism and the perceptions that soldiers do not consent to risking their lives in Israel compared to the United States and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into cyber-conflict, public opinion, and international security is burgeoning, yet the field suffers from an absence of conceptual agreement about key terms. For instance, every time a cyberattack takes place, a public debate erupts as to whether it constitutes cyberterrorism. This debate bears significant consequences, seeing as the ascription of a "terrorism" label enables the application of heavy-handed counterterrorism powers and heightens the level of perceived threat among the public. In light of widespread conceptual disagreement in cyberspace, we assert that public opinion plays a heightened role in understanding the nature of cyber threats. We construct a typological framework to illuminate the attributes that drive the public classification of an attack as cyberterrorism, which we test through a ratings-based conjoint experiment in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel (N = 21,238 observations). We find that the public (1) refrains from labeling attacks by unknown actors or hacker collectives as cyberterrorism; and (2) classifies attacks that disseminate sensitive data as terrorism to a greater extent even than physically explosive attacks. Importantly, the uniform public perspectives across the three countries challenge a foundational tenet of public opinion and international relations scholarship that divided views among elites on foreign policy matters will be reflected by a divided public. This study concludes by providing a definitive conceptual baseline to support future research on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the severe impact of COVID-19 on several societal levels, it is of crucial importance to model the impact of restriction measures on the pandemic evolution, so that governments are able to make informed decisions. Even though there have been countless attempts to propose diverse models since the rise of the outbreak, the increase in data availability and start of vaccination campaigns calls for updated models and studies. Furthermore, most of the works are focused on a very particular place or application and we strive to attain a more general model, resorting to data from different countries. In particular, we compare Great Britain and Israel, two highly different scenarios in terms of vaccination plans and social structure. We build a network-based model, complex enough to model different scenarios of government-mandated restrictions, but generic enough to be applied to any population. To ease the computational load we propose a decomposition strategy for our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family Apiaceae comprises approximately 3700 species of herbaceous plants, including important crops, aromatic herbs and field weeds. Here we report a study of 10 preserved historical or recent virus samples of apiaceous plants collected in the United Kingdom (UK) import interceptions from the Mediterranean region (Egypt, Israel and Cyprus) or during surveys of Australian apiaceous crops. Seven complete new genomic sequences and one partial sequence, of the apiaceous potyviruses apium virus Y (ApVY), carrot thin leaf virus (CaTLV), carrot virus Y (CarVY) and celery mosaic virus (CeMV) were obtained. When these 7 and 16 earlier complete non-recombinant apiaceous potyvirus sequences were subjected to phylogenetic analyses, they split into 2 separate lineages: 1 containing ApVY, CeMV, CarVY and panax virus Y and the other CaTLV, ashitabi mosaic virus and konjac virus Y. Preliminary dating analysis suggested the CarVY population first diverged from CeMV and ApVY in the 17th century and CeMV from ApVY in the 18th century. They also showed the "time to most recent common ancestor" of the sampled populations to be more recent: 1997 CE, 1983 CE and 1958 CE for CarVY, CeMV and ApVY, respectively. In addition, we found a new family record for beet western yellows virus in coriander from Cyprus; a new country record for carrot torradovirus-1 and a tentative novel member of genus Ophiovirus as a co-infection in a carrot sample from Australia; and a novel member of the genus Umbravirus recovered from a sample of herb parsley from Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]