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Early recovery of human bodies from the water requires an understanding of how a body acts in the water. However, there is currently a lack of baseline data surrounding body movement in British Columbian (B.C.) waters. This study aims to assist Canadian response agencies with understanding and predicting body movement in outdoor waterbodies in B.C. One hundred and eighty‐six water‐related fatalities in B.C. waters, including lakes, rivers, and the coastal Pacific Ocean, were examined to determine the recovery times and displacement patterns of submerged decedents. Cases between 2010 and 2021 were extracted from the Police Records Information Management Environment (PRIME‐BC) for analysis. Most deaths were unintentional, followed by suicide and homicide, and most often occurred in rivers, followed by lakes and the ocean. Regardless of waterbody, the first day was the most successful recovery period, with decedents most often recovered close to the incident location. Nearly 16% of individuals in this study were not recovered. Recovery success was greatest in lakes, followed by rivers and the ocean. Body displacement was the least in lakes, while rivers resulted in the furthest and most variable displacement. Low recovery success in the ocean is likely due to decedents being quickly displaced out of the search area, never to be found. The results of this study suggest that knowledge of body movement in outdoor aquatic environments remains incomplete. Further empirical research based on known data is necessary to continue improving prediction of body movement and increase early recovery success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human body in motion is both a material body and a body inscribed with sociocultural meanings. The new materialist premise of examining phenomena, such as bodies in motion, as hybrids of matter and meaning now offers a pathway to seamlessly bring nature and culture together in a more unified research agenda. Barad's agentic realism, particularly, presents a promising option to analyze physically active bodies as socio-material practices through both natural science and social constructivist insights. This, however, requires rethinking the nature of natural and social scientific research to more fully comprehend the complexity of physical activity. To illustrate what such research might look like, I first present Barad's critiques of realist science and social constructivist representationalism to arrive at their suggestion of meeting the universe halfway, performatively, through a relational ontology of the production of material bodies. I conclude with my attempt to think with Barad's philosophical framework to consider how researchers of the moving human body may meet "halfway" to examine the materiality and mattering of the physically active body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbes, particularly of the viral kind, are currently preoccupying human activity and concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although for a long time there has been fear associated with 'germs', notably viruses and bacteria and the diseases they cause, the pandemic has set these fears into overdrive. As serious as this ongoing event is, there are broader interests and important alternative narratives about the microbial world permeating current thinking, based on research that intersects with and includes biopolitical and relational research in geography. In an attempt at balancing the prevailingly negative discourses about microbes and the potential harms they can cause, and to encourage more geographers to contribute to understanding human-microbial relations, this paper draws together recent research across disciplines to discuss the prevalence and role of microbes in environments and in and on human bodies. Drawing on ideas of more-than-human care, the paper shows how geographers and other social scientists can and are already helping reset human-microbial relations, and where further work can productively be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of anatomical dissection in instructing anatomy to medical, dental, and other health science students is indisputable. Ethiopian anatomists encountered challenges in obtaining human bodies for anatomy education and research, both prior to and following the COVID-19 outbreak. The challenges intensified during the pandemic, significantly affecting anatomy education in Ethiopia. This study seeks to investigate the sources of bodies for anatomy, spanning the periods before and after COVID-19, with a particular focus on identifying the primary challenges associated with sourcing of bodies in Ethiopia. Fifty (50) anatomists completed a survey distributed to ten (10) randomly chosen medical institutions in Ethiopia. The survey gathered information on the body profile (number of bodies, age, sex, sources, and methods of body disposal), and the challenges faced during the sourcing of bodies in the years 2018 and 2023. A total of sixty-three (63) bodies were used by the sampled medical institutions between 2018 and 2023 academic years. All (100%) of the bodies used were unclaimed human bodies. Most (66.7%) of these bodies were males. The majority (65.5%) of these bodies were sourced from Tikur Anbessa hospital in Addis Ababa. None (0%) of the sampled medical institutions had body donation programs. Disposal of human tissues encompassed various methods, including the retention of skeletons, prosection of vital organs, and burial of remaining tissues. Economic constraints and the absence of a legal framework document were the main challenges in acquiring bodies in the pre-pandemic period. The COVID-19 pandemic prevention policies and the civil war further exacerbated the challenges in sourcing of bodies for anatomy dissections during the post-pandemic period. The reliance on unclaimed human bodies for anatomy education and research in Ethiopian medical institutions mirrors a common practice across many African countries. The authors suggest the development of a legislative framework or operational guidelines, coupled with empowering the medical institutions to outsource their own funding that will ultimately lead to an increased number of bodies available for anatomical dissection. Over time, implementation and promotion of body donation programs may also resolve body shortages for anatomy education in Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Gait modelling is essential for many applications including animation, activity recognition, medical diagnosis, and robotics. Many researchers have worked on mathematically express the movement of human bodies. At the current stage, the reconstructed waveforms from the mathematical expressions either represent smoothened waveforms, noisy, or require a high number of computations. In this study, the thigh and shank angle waveforms are time and amplitude scaled before performing a discrete Fourier transform (DFT). By doing so, the correlation coefficient between the original and reconstructed waveforms can be improved without increasing the number of harmonics. The shank's angular velocity is also recalculated from the reconstructed shank's angle waveform for gait phase detection, and shows accurate results in heel and toe strikes estimation when compared to the original shank's angular velocity. Additionally, the harmonic components of the waveforms are used for gait recognition. Experimental results show that it is useful to time and amplitude‐scale the angle waveforms to 'enlarge' the distinctive regions of the angle waveforms for better classification accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through its placement of the story of Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place, the present study attempts to localize the Anthropocene. This work aims to reveal other rarely examined sides of the Anthropocene that are obscured by a single holistic Anthropocene. A Small Place shows that a single Anthropocene was formed at the expense of human and non-human bodies in many regions. Kincaid's double gaze strategy is the key to localizing the Anthropocene, and this strategy foregrounds human and non-human bodies that are unfairly damaged and destroyed by the unequal distribution of environmental violence. The body of the aboriginal people of Antigua and the natural body of the island, consumed by the exploitation of European colonists, are gradually dying. This is concretely addressed, using Marx's theory of alienation, which tool is embodied in Kincaid's double gaze strategy. This strategy proposes an expanded shape to the current Anthropocene, as Antigua's aboriginal and colonial acts of nature show newly repeated sites of the neo-liberal era. A Small Place reveals the potential damage of unequal environmental violence through the deleterious effects of slow violence, which is another important tool for elucidating different facets of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse how human bodies are understood and viewed in bioinformatics, partly based on participant observations of a basic bioinformatics course and interviews with bioinformatics researchers. With the proliferation of genomic data, bioinformatics has come to play a crucial role in developments in the biological and biomedical sciences. It is thus worth looking at the role of bioinformatics in current understandings of human bodies. Our analysis shows that bodies in this context can be understood as networked and calculable, along the lines of the analytical logic of informatics. Central to this view are the genome sequences that do not, as in earlier narratives on genes as essentially informational, contain bodies completely. Rather, bodies are enacted as accessible through these sequences. In the process, bodies are continuously matched to the digital image of a normal body. This normal body is an ideal rather than an average body, an ideal that arises from the possibilities and restrictions of science and computer technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching and learning of human anatomy by dissection has existed for thousands of years. Over the centuries, evolving ethical considerations for the sourcing of human bodies for dissection have resulted in a transition from the use of unconsented individuals to that of body donors and the institution of body donation programmes around the world. However, major challenges on the African continent have resulted in the continued use of unconsented or unclaimed bodies and the ethical dilemma for African anatomy departments regarding their use. Some of the key difficulties in sourcing donor bodies which exist on the African continent emanate from religious, cultural, societal trust and other confounding factors. This manuscript explores the challenges and suggests ways in which some of these constraints may be overcome. • Ethical sourcing of bodies for dissection remains a major challenge in Africa. • Many anatomy departments in Africa rely on unclaimed bodies. • Challenges to donation are rooted in African traditional religions and cultures. • Societal mistrust may also play a role. • Strategies for reducing these challenges must be found if dissection is to endure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: Gone Girl de Gillian Flynn se ha convertido en una de las más exitosas y conocidas novelas de crímenes de los últimos años. Pero, ¿por qué? Este artículo explorará el personaje de Amy Elliott Dunne como mujer psicópata que ha revertido y cuestionado las creencias sociales de género, psiquiátricas y de actancia para las mujeres. Amy será analiza utilizando textos psiquiátricos canónicos, una narración autobiográfica y los enfoques más innovadores de la psicopatía para probar que, al terminar la novela, se ha convertido en la única persona capaz de definir su identidad, su cuerpo y su vida. Título en inglés: “Every morning you have to wake up and be you?” Psychopathy and Agency in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012). Abstract: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn has become one of the most successful and well– known crime fiction books in recent years. But why? This article explores the character of Amy Elliott Dunne as a female psychopath who has managed to subvert and question gender, psychiatry and agency expectations for women. Amy will be analysed using canonical psychiatric texts, a biographical account and the most innovative approaches to psychopathy to prove that by the end of the novel she emerges as the only dominant force in her life, her body and her identity

In China as elsewhere in the world, human bodies and body parts have long been used for a wide range of medical and non‐medical purposes. In recent decades, China has played a considerable role in some of the public exhibitions of plastinated bodies and body parts, and the commercial trade in organ donations. These contemporary developments have raised numerous challenging ethical and governance questions. In spite of the growing role of China in these, there have been few studies devoted to Chinese ethical thinking that might govern its policies on the use of human bodies and body parts, and in particular on the issue of commercialization. The present study is an attempt to bridge this gap, and concludes that Confucian thinking stresses the primacy of righteousness over profits and utilities. This conclusion is reached directly by drawing on Confucian ethical responses to the peculiar practice of using human body parts, such as placenta and flesh, as drugs in traditional Chinese medicine in imperial China and what has been called "yili zhibian," the major Confucian discourse on yi (righteousness or justice) and li (profit or interest) in its long history. The principle of prioritizing righteousness over profit leads to a general moral opposition to the commodification of human bodies and body parts. While Confucianism may not place an absolute prohibition on any such use, it does require that any commercial uses are made subject to the fundamental moral principles, such as righteousness, as well as adequate ethical governance procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the goals of Meillassoux's philosophy is to secure the claim that the mathematizable properties of a thing can be thought as real properties of that thing. He explicitly says that he has not accomplished this goal yet. What the claim implies is that those properties remain the same whether there is a subject that thinks of them or not. However, such a goal runs into a series of difficulties which, nonetheless, can be resolved. Specifically, it encounters the difficulty that it is possible to mathematize the properties of non-real entities. A more serious difficulty is represented by the fact that the properties of human bodies, such as weight and height, can be mathematized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to this special issue on topics related to bodies in North and South America considering topics of appearance bias, body modification, and cultural studies.

Le Goff & Truong alert for the historians' oblivion of the human body and its uses and techniques in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the human body constitutes the medical studies' main focus since the Kós School of Medicine where Hippocrates (5th -4th centuries b. C) created the humoral theory which explains rationally the structure and functioning of the bodies without magic and religious healing practices interferences. Galen (2th a. D) improved that theory which became the medieval medicine basis. The second part deals with the relations between spirituals therapeutics and medical practices in the Hospital of Nossa Senhora do Pópulo, in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal (15th - 16th centuries). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter deals with the effect of multiple human bodies on an ultrawideband (UWB) channel in indoor line-of-sight (LOS) environments. To assess this, we choose four environments and consider four scenarios that have a different number of people in each environment. A distance-dependent path-loss model, a frequency-dependent path-loss model, and time dispersion parameters are considered. We found that the distance-dependent path-loss exponent increases as population density increases, while the frequency-dependent path-loss exponent decreases. The time dispersion parameters decrease as population density increases. The results suggest that the effect of the presence of people on UWB channels should be considered when assessing the performance of UWB systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This letter proposes a new feature describing the trajectories of surface patches (ToSP) on human bodies for action recognition by a novel scheme of utilizing RGB and depth videos. RGB data contains appearance information by which we track specific patches on body surfaces while depth data contains spatial information by which we describe surface patches. Specifically, we use spatial-temporal interest points as initial points to track in two directions. A ToSP is extracted by keeping the neighborhood in point cloud of each point on the trajectory. By using the temporal pyramid, ToSPs are matched on several levels based on the surface feature extracted from ToSP segments. The proposed feature captures both the shape and position variations of surface patches, thus it has the advantages of trajectories and local spatial-temporal features. The experiment results show that the proposed feature outperforms the existing trajectories based features and depth features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The main objective of the chapter is to map out some of the most significant possible political consequences of the Internet for the state, citizenship, human rights, and other areas. Design/methodology/approach - The chapter analyzes the phenomena at the level of sociological theory. Its theoretical scope extends to political theory. Findings - The Internet offers immense potential toward improving the nation state in terms of human rights yet in a manner that may well be foiled by several cultural, political, and economic factors. By transforming national boundaries into nongeographic borders that operate transnation-ally and subnationally, and by abstracting from the cybernaut's physical body, the Internet may challenge prevailing notions of state, private property, bodily autonomy, and political personhood, all of which connect discrete bodies with bounded territories. It might free citizenship rights and protections from state capture and denationalize the connection between membership in a particular political community and the enjoyment of rights. It might advance human rights by changing civil society by generating, first, a space where subjugated groups and individuals could agitate for their interests online without putting their bodies on the line and, second, critical public opinion in place of merely mass opinion. It would contribute to a post-national identity where it multiplied local practices to generate global awareness and identified normative!}' universal human rights in local, particular communities while still recognizing individuals' special obligations to those local communities. Research limitations/implications - This speculative trajectory remains all too vulnerable to nondigital settings beholden to particular values, cultures, power systems, inequality, hierarchy, and institutional orders; to market forces and controls; to governmental authority and censorship; and to the global maldistribution of wealth and technology. Liberal democratic political communities should monitor and control the cultural, political, and economic factors that threaten to undermine the Internet's potential toward improving the nation state in terms of human rights. Those committed to promoting the Internet's potential have the task of specifying these factors at the various relevant empirical micro-levels of social organization. Originality value - Most analyses of the Internet either overestimate or underestimate its potential. Here the analysis strives for a balance uncommon in the literature. That balance may be of value primarily to other scholars working in related areas and secondarily to persons involved in public policy and other forms of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]