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Background: Twin gestation is high risk pregnancy associated with high maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Researchers have reported the death of one fetus and the successful delivery of the surviving twin at term. Aim: To present an unusual clinical entity of successful delivery of surviving twin after the demise of a single twin: report of 2-cases. Case reports: Case 1- Mrs T.C 48-year old Para 2+0 (2 alive) with 8-years history of secondary on infertility. Her conception was by IVF-EF. She had demise of first twin at 19 weeks of gestation. Her routine investigations were normal. She was placed on antibiotic cover. Her weekly radiogram and 4-weekly FBC+WBC Differentials, MP, Clothing profile, Urinalysis and m/c/s were normal. She had an elective Caesarean section at term with a good maternal and fetal outcome. She was discharged home on her 5th post-operative day and seen at PNC where she was counseled on family planning. Case 2- Mrs 3-year old Pare 2+1 (2 alive) with twin gestation her conception was spontaneously conceived. She registered for ANC at 16-weeks gestation. Obstetric USS done at booking revealed fetuses had dichorionic placentation. The first twin died at 22-weeks of gestation. Her FBC+WBC Differentials, MP, Clothing profile, Urinalysis and m/c/s were normal. She was placed on antibiotic cover. She had elective caesarean section at term with good maternal and fetal outcome. She was discharged on her fifth post-operative day in good clinical state. She was seen at the post-natal clinic and counseled on family planning. Conclusion: We presented two unusual clinical scenario of successful management of surviving twin after demise of a single twin. The management was multidisciplinary serial maternal and fetal monitoring.

Fifty years have passed since brain death was first proposed as a criterion of death. Its advocates believe that with the destruction of the brain, integrated functioning ceases irreversibl...

Historically, the process of music discovery has been fostered through the personal connection(s) listeners develop with music and artists via broadcast media formats. Streaming technology has made music more accessible to the listener than ever before, but it has also failed the listener, inhibiting the process of music discovery by eliminating the tastemaker. By referencing the theory of Public and Counter-publics by Robert Warner, the paper outlines importance of audience recognition, response, and personal connection to music discovery. In 1942 Joseph Schumpeter wrote about “incessant product and process innovation”, coined the phrase “creative destruction” (a process through which something new brings about the demise of whatever existed before it) and proclaimed it to be “the essential fact about capitalism”. Despite this, Schumpeter also outlined the concept of “creative response” (innovative acts by entrepreneurs) and its importance to society. What 2 Listen 2 embraces the ideology of Schumpeter and creates a multi-level solution to expand the role of the tastemaker, and restore the concept of personal connection to the process of music discovery via storytelling. This solution has been articulated as a market ready broadcast property as well as an app/web solution in a beta form.

This article argues that a stage in history has come where advanced technology, especially that of genetically engineered foods and animals, is quickening the humankind’s downfall. Bacigalupi represents this well in The Windup Girl, a futuristic novel that looks with great focus at the transformation of food and animals in the twenty-third century. In our own world, climate change is creating urgent food issues. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) technologies, having been initially introduced to overcome dire food shortages, have turned out to have many negative side effects, both in our own world and in the fictional world of The Windup Girl. More problematic are the unknown dangers of food transformation technologies. These technologies are driven by multinational corporations both in the real and fictional worlds, and Bacigalupi suggests that the current trajectories of our food transformation industries and their technologies could lead to the demise of human civilization.

Korean–Japanese marriages were common during and after Japan’s imperial rule of Korea. Following the Japanese Empire’s demise, however, Japanese wives in Korean families faced new political dynamic...

Several decades of field, geophysical, analogue, and numerical modeling investigations have enabled documentation of the wide range of tectonic transport processes in accretionary wedges, which constitute some of the most dynamic plate boundary environments on Earth. Active convergent margins can exhibit basal accretion (via underplating) leading to the formation of variably thick duplex structures or tectonic erosion, the latter known to lead to the consumption of the previously accreted material and eventually the forearc continental crust. We herein review natural examples of actively underplating systems (with a focus on circum-Pacific settings) as well as field examples highlighting internal wedge dynamics recorded by fossil accretionary systems. Duplex formation in deep paleo-accretionary systems is known to leave in the rock record (1) diagnostic macro- and microscopic deformation patterns as well as (2) large-scale geochronological characteristics such as the downstepping of deformation and metamorphic ages. Zircon detrital ages have also proved to be a powerful approach to deciphering tectonic transport in ancient active margins. Yet, fundamental questions remain in order to understand the interplay of forces at the origin of mass transfer and crustal recycling in deep accretionary systems. We address these questions by presenting a suite of two-dimensional thermo-mechanical experiments that enable unravelling the mass-flow pathways and the long-term distribution of stresses along and above the subduction interface as well as investigating the importance of parameters such as fluids and slab roughness. These results suggest the dynamical instability of fluid-bearing accretionary systems causes either an episodic or a periodic character of subduction erosion and accretion processes as well as their topographic expression. The instability can be partly deciphered through metamorphic and strain records, thus explaining the relative scarcity of paleo-accretionary systems worldwide despite the tremendous amounts of material buried by the subduction process over time scales of tens or hundreds of millions of years. We finally stress that the understanding of the physical processes at the origin of underplating processes as well as the forearc topographic response paves the way for refining our vision of long-term plate-interface coupling as well as the rheological behavior of the seismogenic zone in active subduction settings., Geosphere, 18 (1), ISSN:1553-040X

The Latin edition of the Mathematicae Collectiones was published in print in 1588, thirteen years after Federico Commandino’s demise. For his Latin version of Pappus’s work, Comandino used two Greek codices, formerly identified by Treweek. In this article, another Greek manuscript, revised and annotated by Commandino, is revealed. Two letters from Commandino to Ettore Ausonio shed new light on the edition of Pappus’s Collectio and show the partnership between the two mathematicians in elaborating supplementary proofs to include in the comments. Using these letters, we can date the first draft of the Latin version in the late 1560s. The posthumous edition of the Mathematicae Collectiones involved Commandino’s disciples and, in particular, Guidobaldo del Monte. The comparison between the manuscripts and the printed edition reveals an important role played by the disciple in revising the Latin translation of his master.

A considerable number of foreign fighters who joined the Islamic State (IS) came from developed countries enjoying high levels of democracy and personal freedom. Even after the demise of the Islamic State, the IS “returnees” remain a source of severe security risk globally. Many countries, especially those with a considerable number of IS fighters and returnees, face the challenge of striking the right balance between protecting national security against IS terrorism and preserving fundamental democratic institutions. This paper examines the effect of democracy and personal freedom on foreign fighters joining IS in Syria and Iraq. We also examine whether democracy and/or personal freedom affect the fraction of IS fighters returning home. Whereas the effect of democracy appears to be inconclusive, our cross-country regressions show that countries with a higher level of personal freedom (i) had a significantly larger fraction of their population joining IS, and (ii) receive a significantly larger percentage share of returning IS fighters. Our results are robust across different model specifications and account for possible collinearity concerns.

The recent digital turn has had an unprecedented impact on the identity of the academic disciplines that study religions. Expectedly, this shift has brought about a dramatic change in the power dynamics between the main research actors and funders. In particular, historians and humanist scholars have taken the brunt, mostly replaced by data scientists, software engineers, statisticians, psychologists, anthropologists, and biologists alike. Consequently, multimillion-dollar projects aimed at testing historical hypotheses and massive agent-based simulations have been implemented on shaky methodological and epistemological grounds. Concurrently, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, private religious bodies have increasingly replaced public funding, raising important but still unaddressed moral questions about transparency, independence, and potential conflicts of interests. The present article explores the ethically troubling relationship between the boom of Big Data and computational approaches to the study of religions past and present and the infiltration of religious philanthrocapitalism in contemporary neoliberal academia.

В статье рассматривается феномен религиозного скопчества, возникший на Древнем Востоке, распространившийся затем в эпоху Античности по всему Средиземноморью и развившийся впоследствии в средневековой Европе. Особое внимание уделяется секте скопцов — ее зарождению, росту, расширению и упадку — в России в период с XVIII по XX вв. Цель статьи — исследовать историческую и психологическую подоплеку этой секты, причины ее возникновения и распада, а также толерантности к ней общества и государства на определенном этапе несмотря на очевидный вред. Автор приходит к выводу, что во всех случаях триггером проявления и преодоления такого рода варварства была репрессивная политика государства. Среди прочего, автор утверждает, что такие эмоционально заряженные проявления варварства оказываются необходимым атрибутом психологической адаптации при переходе на новый уровень общественного развития. Несмотря на то, что о религиозном скопчестве (и, в частности, о русском мистико-экстатическом сектантстве) написано немало, тема все еще недостаточно изучена и открыта для новых подходов, подобных тому, который предлагается в этой статье, без параллелей в российской или мировой науке. The article examines the phenomenon of religious scopchestvo that emerged in the ancient Near East, spread throughout the classical Mediterranean world, and subsequently evolved during the European Middle Ages. The main focus is on the sect of the scoptsy — its inception, growth, expansion, and decline — in Russia during the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. The purpose of the article is to examine this sect’s historical and psychological background, the triggers behind its emergence and decay, and why both the state and society happened tolerate it for quite some time in spite of being obviously harmful. The author’s conclusion is that the origin and downfall of this display of barbarism were equally triggered by the repressive policy of the state. Among other issues, the author asserts that such emotionally-charged expressions of barbarism turn out to be a necessary attribute of psychological adjustment when moving to a new level of societal development. While much has been written on the subject of religious scopchestvo — and, specifically on the mystic and ecstatic sectarianism in Russia — the theme appears to be understudied and open to new approaches, like the one advocated in this article with no parallels in Russian or world scholarship.

Patricia Highsmith’s stated reason for writing The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) was to see if she could elicit empathetic engagement for her immoral protagonist Tom Ripley. Amongst other factors, she achieves her goal by allowing readers to align affectively with the protagonist’s road to self-discovery. Her experiment culminates with Tom’s fruition into an aggressive consumer, thus resolving his and the readers’ apprehensions. On the other hand, Anthony Minghella’s Ripley leaves more room for interpretation. In his interviews, the filmmaker states that he does not aim for his protagonist to remain the sociopath from Highsmith’s novel. Instead, his story explores the absence of a father figure and how it affects his main characters. Consequently, he frames Tom as an underprivileged youth whose emotional instability brings about his demise. To this end, he employs victimization scenes, as well as moral disengagement cues. I argue that, amongst other factors, such an application of an industry-tested design of emphatic concern elicitation obscures the filmmaker’s initial intent. As a result, Minghella’s Tom can be seen as a manipulative sociopath, as well as a victimized tragic hero.

The 2013 Rana Plaza disaster highlighted the failure of labour regulation in global garment value chains. Eight years on, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, what changes have occurred in labour regulation and with what consequences for workers? Using the concept of a labour governance system (LGS), the authors show that, despite improvements in building and worker safety regulation, the garment LGS remains weak and wages, working hours and the treatment of workers show little improvement. The pandemic appears to have exacerbated these deficiencies but it may also offer an opportunity to strengthen the LGS along lines proposed in this article.

Objective To evaluate all individual cases of dual twin demise following laser surgery for twin-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). Method This is an analysis of all monochorionic diamniotic twin gestations with TTTS complicated by dual demise following laser surgery from 2006 to 2019. Cases were reviewed by (1) a fetal surgeon researcher and (2) a panel of independent experienced maternal-fetal medicine specialists to code an etiology of demise for the donor and recipient, and to assess for possible preventability. Results Of 753 twins that underwent laser surgery for TTTS, 52 (6.9%) had postoperative dual demise. In this subgroup, gestational age at surgery was 19.5 (16.1-24.9) weeks, and 36 (69.2%) patients were Quintero stage III and IV. The most common etiology was the spectrum of disorders leading to preterm delivery, which included cervical insufficiency, preterm premature rupture of membranes, and preterm labor (44.2% and 48.1%, donor and recipient, respectively). Some degree of preventability was estimated for 23.1% of dual demises. Conclusions The most common cause of dual demise post laser surgery for TTTS was preterm birth, reinforcing the need for studies regarding the etiology and prevention of post-fetoscopy prematurity. Nearly one-quarter of dual demise cases were deemed potentially preventable.

The 1992–93 war in Abkhazia was one of several ethno-nationalist conflicts which blighted the Caucasus, following the demise of the Soviet Union. The conflict involved the large-scale mobilization of volunteers, from southern Russia and from further afield, who allied with Abkhaz secessionists in the build-up to, and during, the war. This paper examines the coalition-building process between Abkhaz secessionists and other ethno-nationalist movements throughout the conflict. This article’s central questions examine how the coalitions between Abkhaz and nonindigenous movements formed and how the process of coalitionbuilding impacted on the longevity of such alliances. Drawing on the concept of transnational activism, it analyses the role of ethnic relatedness, political opportunity and common threat as contributing factors which influenced mobilization and the alliance-building process. The paper assesses the durability of the transnational coalitions in three different phases of the Georgian- Abkhaz conflict. The study illustrates that the most durable alliances formed with Abkhaz’s closest ethnic relatives Abkhaz- Abaza movements, Ossetian nationalists and the broader “Russian world.” It demonstrates that the Abkhaz connection with Chechen and Circassian movements was event-based and temporary.

BackgroundAdvocates of the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs have argued that a promising approach to treatment was prematurely abandoned in the 1960s primarily because of Richard Nixon's ‘War on Drugs’.This paper (1) briefly describes research in the 1950s and 1960s in North America on the use of LSD to treat alcohol dependence, anxiety in terminal illness, and anxiety and depression; and (2) discusses the factors that led to its abandonment.MethodAn analysis of historical scholarship on psychedelic research in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in North America.ResultsResearch on psychedelic drugs in psychiatry was abandoned for a number of reasons that acted in concert. A major factor was that clinical research on psychedelic drugs was caught up in the tighter regulation of pharmaceutical research after the Thalidomide disaster in 1963. Psychedelic drugs also presented special challenges for randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials in the 1970s that were not as positive as the claims made by their advocates in the 1950s and 1960s. Clinical research became more difficult after 1965 when Sandoz ceased providing psychedelic drugs for research and their nonmedical use was prohibited in 1970.ConclusionsThe demise of psychedelic drug research was not solely due to the ‘War on Drugs’. It was hastened by tighter regulation of pharmaceutical research, the failure of controlled clinical trials to live up to the claims of psychedelic advocates, and the pharmaceutical industry's lack of interest in funding clinical trials.

The article examines the Arabic literary poetry written by Iraqi Jews in Israel during the 1950s after their immigration from Iraq. This temporal revival of Arabic poetry by Jews was the swan song of the Arab-Jewish culture as we are currently witnessing its demise– a tradition that started more than fifteen hundred years ago is vanishing before our eyes. Until the twentieth century, the great majority of the Jews under the rule of Islam adopted Arabic as their language; now Arabic is gradually disappearing as a language mastered by Jews.

As European anatomical teaching developed in the middle ages, anatomists found themselves balanced between the educational and judicial systems. Dissection was associated with the final stages of legal prosecutions and the supply of bodies was severely limited. Driven by increasing student demand for dissection, anatomists found themselves pushed to explore alternative routes for body supply. This led to association with the developing profession of grave robber, body snatchers, and even murderers. Keen to protect themselves from increasing vulnerability to legal prosecution, the eminent anatomists of the United Kingdom pushed for government legislation to provide a supply of cadaveric material for education. This article looks at the development of the Anatomy legislation in the United Kingdom in 1832. By highlighting three events in the early 1800s, it demonstrates that the development of the legislation was for addressing the concerns of the anatomists rather than any ethical concerns about the cadaveric supply. The poorest in society were used to develop the medical understanding of the more wealthy before, during, and after the introduction of the legislation. The first event made the anatomists criminal liable for body supply while the latter two events linked anatomists with murderers. The increasing demand for legislation to provide a supply of cadaveric material released the anatomists from the financial burden of dealing with grave robbers while still allowing dissection tables to be supplied with the poorest in society.

Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, as the title suggests, is an ambitious work. Greene takes the reader on a vast tour which begins with the birth of the universe and ends with its (likely) dissolution. The staggering timescale that Greene considers here is perhaps unique among science books aimed at a wide audience. And Greene uses the backdrop of the universe’s emergence and demise as an effective platform to explore human meaning in a relatively wide range of inquiry. These subjects include consciousness, religion, language, and the arts. It appears significant for Greene that these, as important as they are, all play out in a relatively brief time in the context of the evolution and demise of the universe. At the end of the day, Greene submits that life is likely ephemeral. He provides a quote from Nabokov that characterizes human life as a “brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” (p.13)

This study is a critique of two overlooked shorts of Jia Zhangke, a leading figure from the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers: Smog Journeys (2015) and The Condition of Dogs (2001). Contemplating the imminent demise of human and animal lives represented, it argues that the looming ecological crises in the films stress biological finitude to such an extent that fear and pity disavow the truth about capitalist co-optation. To understand capitalism’s operation behind a catastrophic Anthropocene, I put the films into dialogues with Lacan’s “University Discourse” and “Hysteric’s Discourse”, formal structures that challenge and reshape the immediate identification of a narrative. With their attention to signifiers and affect, these formal structures enable us to understand how images and sounds focalize the viewers’ experience of fear and pity while unearthing the truth about the foreclosure of capitalist ideology. But instead of performing a strictly close-reading of each film, my critique elaborates more on the very psychoanalytic logic of Lacan’s two structures. My wish is that it allows us to see how complex visual and acoustic experience could be in shaping our identification beyond socio-cultural reflections and pure aesthetics. How to cite this article: Siu, Anthony. "Smog Signals, Dog Sirens: Jia Zhangke, Lacan, and the Anthropocene." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 25 (Septmeber 2021): 129-142. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i25.452 Article received: April 23, 2021; Article accepted: June 21, 2021; Published online: September 15, 2021; Original scholarly paper

This hybrid memoir begins and ends with a sea journey. Combining real-life story and dystopian tropical imaginary, the author takes us to the Straits of Malacca off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia, to futures of submerged cities in 2050, and on a final journey into the South China Sea off the coast of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. This is a story of climate change and rising seas entwining vignettes of pandemic lockdown, of a father’s dying, and the author’s future life submerged. It questions human survival in a world of demise, shaped by pandemic and surrounded by waters slowly but inexorably rising.

This special issue focuses on the developments in ethical standards in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) including the former Soviet Union. Over thirty years have elapsed since the demise of the Soviet Bloc and, despite some common institutional features, the societies have had very different experiences with uneven developments across the region since the collapse of communism. In this special issue, the authors explore business and management ethics situated within the context of the challenges that face these still transforming post-communist societies. The papers cover a range of issues and countries including Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia. Potential further avenues for research are identified in the field of business ethics in post-communist societies.

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin wall and one and a half decades after the Big Bang enlargement of the European Union (2004-2007), we revisit contrasting narratives about the benefit of both free trade and the EU enlargement for Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. We distinguish old, pre-2004 EU countries from CEE countries that joined the EU in 2004-2007, as well as from the CEE countries that have not become part of the EU, in particular Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine. Our analysis looks at two temporal windows: one from 1991 – the demise of the Eastern European free trade zone (COMECON) – to today, and the second zooming on the period following the enlargement process of 2004-2007. Our analysis points to an unfavourable turn of events for CEE countries, which appear to have experienced significant losses in their process of rapid integration in the world and EU economies. We are comparing these events in Central and Eastern Europe with the patterns of de-industrialisation and migration that took place in Latin America after a similar free trade shock starting in the 1970s.

In contrast to many other countries, the virulence and genetic diversity of the South African Puccinia triticina population before 1980 is unknown, because of the absence of regular and systematic race analysis data and viable rust cultures. Herbarium specimens housed at the National Collection of Fungi, Biosystematics Unit, Plant Health and Protection, Agricultural Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa (SA), provided the opportunity to investigate the genetic development of the population using isolates collected between 1906 and 2010. Five subpopulations that survived between 21 and 82 years in the field were found. While three of these could represent the original races that entered SA during European settlement, two appear to be recent exotic introductions into SA, most probably from other African countries. The demise of the three oldest subpopulations might be from the release of resistant wheat cultivars. The population is clonal, where new virulence develops through single step mutations and selection for virulence. Although a possible case of somatic hybridization was found, sexual reproduction appears to be absent in SA. This study confirmed the importance of annual surveys in SA and its neighboring countries for the timely detection of new virulent races that could threaten wheat production in SA.

This article examines the chronic health conditions of African Americans who experience disparities because of poverty, low literacy, and cultural practices that affect decisions about food, nutrition, and health care. It will examine governmental policies, for example, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Artiga et al., 2020), and how these policies contribute to health and wellbeing of people from low-income communities. Furthermore, it explores the overrepresented deaths among African Americans and other communities of color resulting from the pandemic?deaths that result from co-existing health conditions and the inability to afford immediate care.

Vietnam’s voluntary social insurance (VSI) policy has been in force since 2008 and by 2018 included 270,000 participants (accounting for 0.79% of the labor force). Hanoi City is the capital of Vietnam, with 21,156 participants (0.56%). The proportion of people participating in VSI is still very low. Workers who have at least 20 years of participation will receive a monthly pension and their beneficiaries will receive a death benefit in case of their demise. The opinions of workers about VSI policies are presented in the report through interviews with 170 voluntary social insurance participants and 168 non-participants in Tay Ho District, Hanoi City. The research results in new findings using comparison between participants and non-participants. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with 40 people, including social insurance officials in Tay Ho District, ward officials, and workers, to clarify why the number of VSI participants is low. Based on the research and evaluation of workers concerning VSI policies and regulations, we identify the main causes of this situation, as well as the policy- and communication-related shortcomings, and suggest solutions for improving the social insurance participation rate of individuals in Hanoi City in particular, and Vietnam in general.

Aims. Coronavirus disease 2019 is responsible for a worldwide increase in morbidity and mortality. The relationship of this infection to mother-to-child vertical transmission has not been elucidated yet. However, recent reports indicate a foetal death rate of up to 3%. Methods. We report a case of sudden pre-term foetal demise in a woman positive for SARS-CoV-2 but asymptomatic, with physiological course of pregnancy. Results. One of the possible explanations of sudden foetal death may be acute placental insufficiency caused by a SARS-CoV-2 placental infection or the development of foetal inflammatory response syndrome (FIRS). Conclusion. Considering the potential risk of foetal demise, questions remain regarding foetal monitoring and the timing of labour and delivery in the second and third trimesters, particularly in asymptomatic or mild maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection. A relevant multidisciplinary team must also be aware of these risks associated with possibly fatal consequences.