Research in science and technology studies has analyzed how patients’ groups engage in practices that connect biomedicine and patient experience in order to become involved in the shaping of ...biomedical research. However, there has been limited attention to the affective dimensions of such practices. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a gynecological cancer patients’ group in Sweden, this article focuses on practices that aim to influence researchers and research institutions to prioritize biomedical gynecological cancer research. It analyzes how “affects” are woven through these practices and pays attention to the entanglements of affects, biomedical research, and lay experience they involve. The article explores the relation between the gynecological cancer patients’ group and biomedical research as a set of material-semiotic practices of “moving evidence.” These practices of moving evidence (1) enact gynecological cancer as under-researched; (2) collect and produce new “evidence”; (3) “mobilize” the evidence at public events, in interactions with biomedical researchers, and in different online settings; and (4) entangle affects with biomedical and experiential evidence to enact (a lack of) gynecological cancer biomedical research as a matter of concern.
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Focusing on ordinary people's political talk the paper contributes to the study of deliberative democracy from a systemic perspective. By examining citizens' everyday communication, it focuses on an ...object that is rarely studied from a deliberative perspective, but crucial for the deliberative system's democratic character. By investigating the couplings between different arenas of political talk between citizens, ranging from informal private, semi-public and public conversations to formalized discussions at public events, it provides evidence on the appropriateness of the systemic conception of deliberative democracy. Analyzing data from two high-quality face-to-face surveys by means of structural equation modeling the paper demonstrates how these venues are connected to one another. The linkages between these discursive spheres create opportunities for bottom-up information flows from informal everyday conversations into formalized public discussions. To some extent, informal conversations also empower citizens for participation in these more demanding organized discussion events. Informal political conversations between strangers, a type of political talk largely neglected by extant research, emerge as a crucial nexus that funnels the motivational and capacity-building influence of everyday political talk within people's social networks into active participation in formalized public discussions.
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Using data on Chinese GEM-listed companies from the first quarter of 2018 to the second quarter of 2022, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on SMEs' financing constraints and the moderating effect of ...fiscal and tax incentives using the difference-in-differences method (DID). The results indicate that the COVID-19 shock severely affected SMEs' financing constraints, and this effect is more pronounced among firms in industries particularly sensitive to COVID-19, such as transportation, catering, accommodation, culture, and entertainment. A further analysis shows that tax incentives and fiscal subsidies have differing moderating effects, with the former alleviating SMEs' financing constraints and the latter having only a relatively limited effect. This finding provides direct micro-level evidence for understanding the impact of COVID-19 on financing constraints and provides insights for promoting the optimization of fiscal support policies for SMEs.
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desde hace un poco más de quince años Colombia ha vivido una ola de producción de memorias asociadas al conflicto armado. En ello ha contribuido la promulgación de leyes que legitimaron las voces de ...las víctimas, quienes por décadas lucharon porque sus pasados fueran significativos para la sociedad colombiana. Sin embargo, el número creciente de publicaciones, de actos públicos y de lugares promovidos por diversos actores sociales hace difícil comprender la totalidad de las memorias y de las reflexiones que hay sobre ellas. Después de una revisión sistemática de bibliografía y de sitios web, se propone una perspectiva de análisis que busca hacer inteligible el universo de dichas memorias. Se establecen tres categorías que sirven para definir algunas características generales: primero, los ámbitos de producción de las memorias, que responde a quiénes son sus emisores; segundo, las grandes áreas de trabajo, para establecer qué se dice sobre ellas; tercero, los vectores o vehículos con los cuales las memorias y sus reflexiones se materializan en la sociedad, es decir cómo se transmiten sus mensajes. Tal delimitación aporta en la construcción crítica de problemas de investigación sobre las memorias del conflicto armado ya que contribuye a visualizar un panorama general sobre su producción.
No Jab, No Entry ADDADZI-KOOM, MAAME EFUA
Health and human rights,
12/2022, Volume:
24, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
As part of global efforts to reach herd immunity to stem the spread of COVID-19, the government of Ghana in 2021 declared December as the month of vaccination. Along with the declaration were ...statements about the government’s intention to make vaccination mandatory in January 2022 for select groups of persons and to restrict access of unvaccinated persons to certain public spaces. The directives attracted varied reactions since they touched on constitutionally guaranteed fundamental human rights. Later, in March 2022, the president eased some restrictions, such as mask wearing and social distancing at public events but subject to all users being fully vaccinated. This paper analyzes the constitutional and human rights implications of a vaccine mandate in Ghana. It answers the question, Is mandatory vaccination necessary and appropriate given the COVID-19 situation in Ghana? I make a case for finding a reasonable balance between the personal liberties of Ghanaians and the state’s responsibility to protect public health. Using the proportionality test, I argue that while mandatory vaccination is permissible within Ghana’s legal and constitutional framework, a tiered approach is preferable.
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Retrograde amnesia has been largely documented in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, it is still not clear whether ineffectiveness in ...recalling past acquired information reflects loss of individual memory traces or failure to access specific stored traces. We aimed to disentangle the differential contribution of storage and retrieval processes to the pattern of retrograde amnesia in these patients. This issue was investigated in 18 a-MCI and 19 AD patients who were compared to 20 healthy controls. A novel questionnaire about public events was used; it consisted of two procedures (i.e., a free recall test and a true/false recognition test). Crucial differences emerged in the way the two groups of patients performed the experimental tasks. In fact, although both a-MCI and AD patients showed a similar pattern of impairment on the free recall test, a-MCI patients were able to normalise their performance on the recognition test, thus overcoming their deficits at the time of recall. Conversely, AD patients showed both reduced free recall ability and diminished sensitivity to benefit from recognition in recalling public events. Our findings suggest that the memory processes underlying RA were different for a-MCI and AD. Deficits in remote memory are prevalently explained by impaired retrieval abilities in a-MCI and by impaired storage in AD. This distinction between retrograde amnesia due to defective trace utilisation in a-MCI and trace storage in AD is consistent with the temporal unfolding of declining anterograde memory over the course of disease progression to AD.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Meteorological disasters are important public events that can generate a wide range of online public opinion. Studying the patterns and mechanisms of public opinion dissemination during ...meteorological disasters and moderately strengthening the voice of official media can alleviate public nervousness and facilitate disaster prevention, reduction, and recovery. Therefore, taking Typhoon Mangkhut as an example, we collected data from Sina Weibo in China and Twitter in the Philippines. Based on a 'data preparation-public opinion mining-data analysis' framework, patterns and characteristics of the evolution of public opinion were identified through social network analysis and sentiment analysis methods. The results showed that public opinion surrounding Mangkhut differed in the two countries. The trend in public opinion was 'low-high-low.' During natural disasters, shifts in opinion exhibited a 'positive-negative-positive' pattern. In the Philippines, netizen sentiment reached lowest point 24-48 h after the typhoon landed and recovered steadily and quickly. However, among Chinese netizens, sentiment hit lowest point later, mostly because of a man-made negative event. To help people cope with natural disasters, the Chinese official media should promptly release accurate information, play a more active role in guiding public opinion, and pay more attention to man-made negative events during disasters.
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In recent years several public events have raised serious questions about the respect shown by the Australian intelligence agencies and their political masters for civil liberties. The controversies ...have been linked to certain structural changes announced in 2017. This paper puts these changes and the associated controversies in the context of the principles and structures established by Justice Robert Marsden Hope in two royal commissions on the agencies in the 1970s and 1980s. It concludes that another wide-ranging review, comparable to the Hope royal commissions, would be timely and appropriate.
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Successive Kano emirs have worn resplendent garments to convey their regal political authority among their subjects. The former Emir of Kano, Sarkin Muhammadu Sanusi II, of Kano State, Nigeria, was ...renowned for his striking royal dress, which often included a long jacket-like robe covered by a large hooded burnous, trousers, ostrich feather shoes, and a turban with a veil-like cloth, which could cover his face. These expensive garments and accessories were made with a range of materials, which included handwoven cotton and raw silk material made in Nigeria, as well as imported textiles from Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and China that were sewn and embroidered in Nigeria, Egypt, and Morocco. The garments of late or former emirs are not retained in the palace but rather are distributed among family members, thus continuing connections between emirs-past and present-and their relations. While similar styles and materials have been maintained to some extent, certain aspects of these royal garments have changed over the past century, which reflect the specific preferences of the reigning emir. This study is based on a selection of royal garments worn by the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, along with discussions with palace officials, embroiderers, and tailors. Photographs of burnouses, robes, and turbans worn by Sarkin Muhammadu Sanusi II as well as by earlier emirs illustrate how these garments were worn at public events, which have contributed to the continuing political authority of traditional rulers in the modern political era in northern Nigeria.
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