114612 research outputs found
Sort by
Fear and loathing in Luhansk
No full textThis article is an exploration of Psychological Operations, focusing on both the role which fear plays in Psychological Operations, and how the Russian Federation employed Psychological Operations in the War in Ukraine (2014–2021). A qualitative methodology is used to explore fear as a neurological, psychological and social phenomenon, and how it may be utilised in Psychological Operations. The author finds that Russia’s initial use of Psychological Operations was focused on making tactical gains against the Ukrainian military. Shock tactics, combined with strategic messaging, encouraged mass defections from the Ukrainian army and border guard, significantly degrading the combat effectiveness of Kyiv’s forces, and increasing the likelihood of victory for the Donbass secessionists. The case study is limited in scope to 2014–2021. The paper can thus be read as both an analysis of one element of Russia’s shaping phase prior to the 2022 invasion, and/or a framework for analysing the current stage of conflict
A ten-year observational study of the use of two-way catheters post-transurethral resection of the prostate without the use of post-op irrigation
No full textBackground:
Over 15,000 transurethral resections of the prostate (TURP) are performed annually in the United Kingdom. It is therefore vital that every aspect of peri-operative care be optimised. Our centre favours the use of two-way catheters post-operatively without the use of continuous bladder irrigation (CBI).
Objectives:
To evaluate our practice of using two-way catheters without irrigation post-TURP and to determine impact on patient care compared with standard three-way catheterisation. Our primary outcome was duration of admission, but multiple secondary outcomes were also analysed.
Design, setting, and participants: This was a prospective observational study. Every patient undergoing TURP at our centre from 2009 to 2019 was included. Following TURP patients were catheterised with two-way catheters. Prospective patient data were collected pertaining to peri-operative factors. These data were then compared with the data published in the literature.
Results:
687 patients underwent TURP at our centre between 2009 and 2019. The average age of patients was 71.42 (±7.89). 87.17% (n = 598) had two-way catheters placed post-operatively. Average duration of admission was 1.61 (±1.35) days, increasing to 2.20 days if patients required three-way catheters or 2.53 days if requiring CBI. TWOC was successful in 97.71% of patients. Complication rate was 8.73% (n = 60). When compared with other centres, our method reduced lengths of admission and transfusion rates (1.6 days versus 3.1 days and 0.87% versus 2.83%, respectively).
Conclusion:
Our method is safe and is associated with a reduced length of admission. We recommend this practice to the wider urological community.
Patient summary:
This study looked at whether there was any impact on patients if two-way catheters were used following TURP. We found that use of two-way catheters reduced length of admission and duration of catheterisation. We also found that it did not increase likelihood of peri-operative complications in comparison with other centres
Stationary stochastic Navier–Stokes on the plane at and above criticality
Get PDFIn the present paper, we study the fractional incompressible Stochastic Navier–Stokes equation on R2, formally defined as
∂tv=−12(−Δ)θv−λv⋅∇v+∇p+∇⊥(−Δ)θ−12ξ,∇⋅v=0, (0.1)
where θ∈(0,1], ξ is the space-time white noise on R+×R2 and λ is the coupling constant. For any value of θ the previous equation is ill-posed due to the singularity of the noise, and is critical for θ=1 and supercritical for θ∈(0,1). For θ=1, we prove that the weak coupling regime for the equation, i.e. regularisation at scale N and coupling constant λ=λ^/logN−−−−−√, is meaningful in that the sequence {vN}N of regularised solutions is tight and the nonlinearity does not vanish as N→∞. Instead, for θ∈(0,1) we show that the large scale behaviour of v is trivial, as the nonlinearity vanishes and v is simply converges to the solution of (0.1) with λ=0
Investor logins and the disposition effect
Get PDFWe study nudges that turn out to have precise null effects in reducing long-run credit card debt. We test nudges across two field experiments covering 183,441 UK cardholders. Our first experiment studies nudges added to monthly credit card statements. Our second experiment studies letters and email nudges (separate from monthly statements) sent to cardholders who signed up to automatically pay the minimum required payment. In a follow-up survey to our second experiment, we find that 96% of respondents underestimate the time it would take to fully repay a debt if the cardholder made only the minimum required payment. The nudges reduce this confusion, but underestimation remains overwhelmingly common
Middle England’s empire : social reproduction in the colonial global economy
Get PDFThis article brings feminist critiques of capitalism into conversation with race-conscious International Political Economy to highlight the place of social reproduction in the colonial global economy. It does so by taking a provincial perspective, using Royal Leamington Spa as a case study to reveal how the provision of care for the elderly and the ill sustained colonial elites across the life course, while religious and educational practices helped transmit cultural values across generations and reproduce imperialism as an institutionalised social order. Whereas the finance houses of London, the factories of Manchester, and the ports of Liverpool and Bristol constitute nodal points for imperial circuits of capital, the spa town condenses the everyday practices through which bourgeois empire was lived and made liveable. These findings point to a functional differentiation of economic space within the metropole and offer a critical reinterpretation of Middle England as a whitened site of middle-class respectability
Fashioning the “Order of Saint Clare.” A Rule illuminated by Neri da Rimini : Princeton University Library MS 83 in context
Get PDFThis interdisciplinary essay is an investigation of an illuminated, early 14th-century copy of the rule of the "Order of Saint Clare" issued by Pope Urban IV in 1263, now in Princeton. It examines the unprecedented visual language adopted in a female Franciscan context to authorize their way of life, and places the manuscript in context, exploring how it relates to other early representations showing Saints Francis and Clare together and documenting the production of this and comparable early rule manuscripts, including a previously unpublished copy now in Venice.
Social media disclosure and reputational damage
No full textWe provide new evidence on the effects of social media in the context of a financial scandal using a sample of banks that were accused of manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). We find that increased bank Twitter activity when the scandal surfaced has a positive moderating effect on returns. However, the dissemination of content op- erated by social media users has a negative counterbalancing effect, thus amplifying the impact of the scandal. In particular, tweets that are characterized by positive sentiment contribute to exacerbating the reputational damage suffered by banks. We contribute to the emerging literature on the role of social media on capital markets
Work hours, free time, and economic output
No full textMy aim in this article is to contribute to defences of working time policies by attempting to meet an objection that comes from those who condemn these measures on the alleged grounds that they reduce economic output. What is more, as I emphasize throughout, it is possible to rebut such a concern in a fashion that is consistent with the demands of liberal anti-perfectionism. In itself, this is a philosophically striking and politically significant result. However, beyond this, much of the value of my discussion lies in the details of how to meet the relevant objection, and perhaps especially in my novel liberal defence of the ideal of the stationary state
A precipitation downscaling framework for regional warning of debris flow in mountainous areas
Get PDFA timely warning system for debris-flow mitigation in mountainous areas is vital to decrease casualties. However, the lack of rainfall monitoring stations and coarse resolution of satellite-based observations pose challenges for developing such a debris-flow warning model in data-scarce areas. To offer an effective method for the generation of precipitation with fine resolution, a machine learning (ML) based approach is proposed to establish the relationship between precipitation and regional environmental factors (REVs), including normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), digital elevation model (DEM), geolocations (longitude and latitude) and land surface temperature (LST). This approach enables the downscaling of 3B42 TRMM precipitation data, providing fine temporal and spatial resolution precipitation data. We use PERSIANN-Cloud Classification System-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CCS-CDR) data to calibrate the downscaled results using geographical differential analysis (GDA) before applying them in a case study in the Gyirong Zangbo Basin. After that, we calculate the rainfall thresholds of effective antecedent rainfall (Pe) - intraday rainfall (Po) based on the calibrated precipitation and integrate them into a susceptibility map to develop a debris-flow warning model. The results show that: (1) this ML-based approach can effectively achieve the downscaling of TRMM data; (2) calibrated TRMM data outperforms the original TRMM and downscaled TRMM data, reducing deviations by 55% and 57%; (3) the integrated model, incorporating rainfall thresholds, outperforms a single susceptibility map in providing debris-flow warnings. The developed warning model can offer dynamic warnings for debris flows that may have been missed by the original warning system at a regional scale
Modeling the multi‐state natural history of rare diseases with heterogeneous individual patient data : a simulation study
Get PDFMulti‐state survival models are used to represent the natural history of a disease, forming the basis of a health technology assessment comparing a novel treatment to current practice. Constructing such models for rare diseases is problematic, since evidence sources are typically much sparser and more heterogeneous. This simulation study investigated different one‐stage and two‐stage approaches to meta‐analyzing individual patient data (IPD) in a multi‐state survival setting when the number and size of studies being meta‐analyzed are small. The objective was to assess methods of different complexity to see when they are accurate, when they are inaccurate and when they struggle to converge due to the sparsity of data. Biologically plausible multi‐state IPD were simulated from study‐ and transition‐specific hazard functions. One‐stage frailty and two‐stage stratified models were estimated, and compared to a base case model that did not account for study heterogeneity. Convergence and the bias/coverage of population‐level transition probabilities to, and lengths of stay in, each state were used to assess model performance. A real‐world application to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a neuromuscular rare disease, was conducted, and a software demonstration is provided. Models not accounting for study heterogeneity were consistently out‐performed by two‐stage models. Frailty models struggled to converge, particularly in scenarios of low heterogeneity, and predictions from models that did converge were also subject to bias. Stratified models may be better suited to meta‐analyzing disparate sources of IPD in rare disease natural history/economic modeling, as they converge more consistently and produce less biased predictions of lengths of stay