This paper has as its reference point the issue of corruption in Ukraine, which has recently once again become the subject of attention due to reports that it may be an important factor when it comes ...to the recalcitrance of some of Ukraine’s Western partners andallies with regard to offering military support for the country’s war effort against Russia. The main objective is to demonstrate how the West’s tendency to overstress this problem, for which the paper offers proof, that could manifest itself in it applying undue pressure on the Ukrainian authorities, entails risks and may have a number of undesirable repercussions due to 1) providing fuel to Russian disinformation campaigns and negatively affecting the perceptions of Ukraine among Western citizens, 2) hampering the Ukrainian military campaign and its appraisal abroad, 3) indirectly contributing to changing the nature of Ukrainian nationalism by making it more exclusionary.
ackground and Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has emerged as one of the most profound global health crises of the 21st century. In the United States, ...the impact of COVID-19 has been severe, with notable disparities observed in the Southern region. This study aims to evaluate trends in COVID-19 mortality and hospitalization rates in southern states over the course of 2020 to 2023 by presenting a comprehensive analysis of trends in COVID-19 outcomes within Southern states. Methods: Data for the study was collected from the COVID-19 Data Tracker, a resource provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Stratification techniques were employed to categorize the sample into subgroups of Southern states (Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia). Joinpoint regression models were used to calculate Annual Percentage Change (APC) and Average Annual Percentage Change (AAPC). Results: Results showed a downward trend in both age adjusted APC and AAPC COVID-19 hospitalization rates and an upward trend in mortality rates for all southern states between 2020 to 2023. Only 3 out of the 12 states have age adjusted mortality rates that are lower than the national age adjusted mortality rate for COVID-19 (286.4 deaths per 100,000). COVID-19 vaccine coverage in 12 southern states is 61.8% - 91.3%. Conclusion:The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the evolving dynamics of COVID-19 pandemic within the southern U.S. states. The information would be a valuable guidance for public health strategies, resource allocation, and policymaking aimed at addressing this ongoing crisis. July 2024; Vol. 18(2):001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55010/imcjms.18.013 *Correspondence: Bever-Leigh Holden, Jackson State University, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Jackson, Mississippi, USA, Email:bever-leigh.i.holden@students.jsums.edu; beverleighholden@yahoo.com
This convergent parallel-design mixed-methods process evaluation of the QUARTET USA (Quadruple Ultra-Low-Dose Treatment for Hypertension USA) clinical trial (NCT03640312) explores patient and health ...care professional perceptions about the use of low-dose quadruple therapy (LDQT) as a novel strategy for hypertension management.
A survey of all 62 patients enrolled in the QUARTET USA trial was conducted. A subsample of 13 patients and 11 health care professionals, recruited via purposive sampling, took part in semistructured interviews. At enrollment, 68% of participants (mean SD age, 51.7 11.5 years; 56% self-identified as Hispanic: Mexican ethnicity, 16% as Hispanic: other ethnicity, 16% as Black race, 8% as White race, and 1.6% as South Asian race) reported that their current health depended on blood pressure medications, and 48% were concerned about blood pressure medications. At trial completion, 80% were satisfied with LDQT, 96% were certain the benefits of taking LDQT outweighed the disadvantages, and 96% reported that LDQT was convenient to take. Both patients and health care professionals found LDQT acceptable because it reduced patients' perceived pill burden and facilitated medication adherence. Health care professionals stated that a perceived limitation of LDQT was the inability to titrate doses. Steps to facilitate LDQT implementation include introducing stepped-care combinations and treatment protocols, inclusion in clinical practice guidelines, and eliminating patient cost barriers.
LDQT was an acceptable strategy for hypertension treatment among patients and health care professionals involved in the QUARTET USA clinical trial. Although LDQT was generally perceived as beneficial for maintaining patients' blood pressure control and facilitating adherence, some clinicians perceived limitations in titration inflexibility, adverse effects, and costs.
URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT03640312.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many questioned whether the large number of political appointees in the Federal Emergency Management Agency contributed to the agency's poor handling of the ...catastrophe, ultimately costing hundreds of lives and causing immeasurable pain and suffering.The Politics of Presidential Appointmentsexamines in depth how and why presidents use political appointees and how their choices impact government performance--for better or worse.
One way presidents can influence the permanent bureaucracy is by filling key posts with people who are sympathetic to their policy goals. But if the president's appointees lack competence and an agency fails in its mission--as with Katrina--the president is accused of employing his friends and allies to the detriment of the public. Through case studies and cutting-edge analysis, David Lewis takes a fascinating look at presidential appointments dating back to the 1960s to learn which jobs went to appointees, which agencies were more likely to have appointees, how the use of appointees varied by administration, and how it affected agency performance. He argues that presidents politicize even when it hurts performance--and often with support from Congress--because they need agencies to be responsive to presidential direction. He shows how agency missions and personnel--and whether they line up with the president's vision--determine which agencies presidents target with appointees, and he sheds new light on the important role patronage plays in appointment decisions.
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•Nuclear energy and economic complexity in the USA are examined.•A machine-learning and simulation approach to evaluate the ecological footprint.•Improved technology and nuclear ...energy support environmental quality.•Economic complexity decreases the environmental quality.•Initiatives related to the circular economy are interconnected.
The circular economy decouples economic activity from finite resource consumption, creating a resilient system that can tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. Nuclear energy has been designated as one of the primary concerns of energy sector modernization because it allows for significant reductions in dangerous material emissions into the environment. Therefore, nuclear energy and improved technologies may become critical growth areas aligned with circular economy principles. We use Dynamic Autoregressive Distributive Lag (DARDL) and Kernel-based Regularized Least Squares (KRLS) to analyze United States data from 1985 to 2016 empirically. The DARDL result shows a positive relationship between ecological footprint and economic complexity, increasing short-term environmental costs. However, nuclear power generation and improved technology significantly reduce ecological concerns. Economic complexity is explored in this work in more nuanced terms, emphasizing the importance of considering the external environment when implementing different economic activities.Policy implications, study limitations, and future research directions are discussed.
Remaking the heartland Wuthnow, Robert
2011, 2011., 20101228, 2010, 2011-01-01, 20110101
eBook, Book
For many Americans, the Midwest is a vast unknown. In Remaking the Heartland, Robert Wuthnow sets out to rectify this. He shows how the region has undergone extraordinary social transformations over ...the past half-century and proven itself surprisingly resilient in the face of such hardships as the Great Depression and the movement of residents to other parts of the country. He examines the heartland's reinvention throughout the decades and traces the social and economic factors that have helped it to survive and prosper.
America is becoming a class-based society.It's now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the top 1% - especially the top 0.01% - and how the ultra-rich are hoarding income and wealth while ...incomes for most other Americans are stagnant. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else.Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income isn't the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing, health care, and other necessary goods and services.As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Various forms of "opportunity hoarding" among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Upper middle class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.Inequality is inevitable and can even be good, within limits. But Reeves argues that society can take effective action to reduce opportunity hoarding and thus promote broader opportunity. This fascinating book shows how American society has become the very class-defined society that earlier Americans rebelled against - and what can be done to restore a more equitable society.
Temporal changes in net energy balance of animals strongly influence fitness; consequently, natural selection should favor behaviors that increase net energy balance by buffering individuals against ...negative effects of environmental variation. The relative importance of behavioral responses to climate-induced variation in costs vs. supplies of energy, however, is uncertain, as is the degree to which such responses are mediated by current stores of energy. We evaluated relationships among behavior, nutritional condition (i.e., energy state), and spatiotemporal variation in costs vs. supplies of energy available to a large-bodied endotherm, the North American elk (
Cervus elaphus
), occupying two ecosystems with contrasting climates and energy landscapes: a temperate, montane forest and an arid, high-elevation desert. We hypothesized that during spring through autumn, behavioral responses to the energy landscape would be both context dependent (i.e., would vary as a function of the contrasting environmental conditions experienced by elk in the forest vs. the desert), and state dependent (i.e., would vary as a function of the energy balance of an individual). We tested several predictions derived from that hypothesis by combining output from a biophysical model of the thermal environment with data on forage quality, animal locations, and nutritional condition of individuals. At the population level, elk in the desert selected areas that reduced costs of thermoregulation over those that provided the highest-quality forage. In the forest, however, costs imposed by the thermal environment were less pronounced, and elk selected areas that increased access to high-quality forage over those that reduced costs of thermoregulation. At the individual level, nutritional condition did not influence strength of selection for low-cost areas or high-quality forage among elk in the forest. In the desert, however, strength of selection for low-cost areas (but not forage quality) was state dependent; individuals in the poorest condition at the end of winter showed the strongest selection for areas that reduced costs of thermoregulation during spring and summer, and also expended the least amount of energy on locomotion. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the roles of behavior and nutritional condition in buffering endotherms against direct and indirect effects of climate on fitness.
Schulden prägen das Leben vieler Millionen Menschen in den USA. Felix Krämer macht sich auf die Suche nach ihren Geschichten von 1865 bis in die Gegenwart. Dabei wird deutlich, dass insbesondere ...Schwarze Amerikaner:innen, aber auch Frauen, Arbeiter:innen oder Migrant:innen immer wieder höheren Kreditrisiken oder untragbaren Konditionen ausgesetzt waren. Solche Unterschiede werden mit dem Begriff der »Schuldendifferenz« adressiert. Das Buch zeigt dies an verschiedenen Verschuldungsformen wie dem System des Sharecropping nach Ende der Sklaverei, an Bildern von Loan Sharks oder an Immobilienschulden und zeichnet nach, wie Studienverschuldung und Kreditkartenpraktiken den Neoliberalismus in die Alltagserfahrungen der Menschen brachten. Mit seinem Fokus auf Prekarisierung durch Verschuldung legt das Buch eine Produktionslinie des »wealth gap« in den USA frei und füllt so eine Leerstelle in der neuen Kapitalismusgeschichte.
