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Estimation Model for Healthcare Costs and Intensive Care Units Access for Covid-19 Patients and Evaluation of the Effects of Remdesivir in the Portuguese Context: Hypothetical Study
No full textBackground and Objectives
In March 2020, the World Health Organization announced a state of emergency due to the appearance of a pandemic caused by the Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as Covid-19. Most governments chose to implement precautionary measures, e.g., physical distancing and use of protective devices, which can in part limit the transmission of the virus. However, the healthcare system experienced numerous structural problems in managing the Covid-19 patients given the limited human and technical resources in critical areas, such as the intensive care units (ICUs). Different therapeutic solutions should therefore be assessed, which can potentially minimize the negative impact of the disease on patients, favoring their recovery and optimizing healthcare resources. The objective of this study is to simulate the impact of remdesivir treatment on the pandemic course in the long term.
Methods
A forecasting model is designed to estimate how remdesivir would impact the ICU capacity and the healthcare costs from the hospital perspective when managing COVID-19 patients. This model is applied in the Portuguese context with a 20-week projection starting on May 1st and concluding on September 18th, 2021. The data inputs were carefully collected by consulting different sources, such as published global literature, official governmental reports, and available infectious diseases databases, i.e., Our World in Data, Portuguese Ministry of Health, and experts’ opinions.
Results
The model showed that the introduction of remdesivir-based treatment in patients with Covid-19 pneumonia requiring supplemental oxygen therapy generates a significant reduction in both the number of ICU admissions and deaths, which would produce more than €23 million in cost savings and avoid more than 261 ICUs admissions and 166 deaths.
Conclusion
It is demonstrated that alternative treatments such as remdesivir can reduce both the health burden for healthcare facilities, optimize their management, and improve patients’ clinical conditions. However, the model is centered on Rt values, which cannot be generalized to the entire country; hence, the results of this research should be considered as a “hypothetical study”
Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National and Breaking the ‘Glass Ceiling’? The 2022 French Presidential and Parliamentary Elections
No full textThe 2022 French Presidential elections produced a re-run of the 2017 contest with Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron in a head-to-head run-off in the second round with the Radical Right, Rassemblement National (RN) challenger unable to defeat the incumbent President. At the subsequent Parliamentary elections, the RN made a significant breakthrough, piercing the so-called ‘plafond de verre’ (‘Glass Ceiling’), obtaining 89 seats, a tenfold increase compared to 2017. The article analyses the causes of this breakthrough by concentrating predominantly on the ‘external supply-side’ conditions created by the RN under Marine Le Pen’s leadership during the Macron presidency and in the 2022 election campaigns. It also focuses on Le Pen’s responses to the significant internal challenges faced within the party and subsequently from Far-Right contender Eric Zemmour during the campaign. The article concludes that the ‘supply-side’ responses emanating from Le Pen and the RN are crucial to a holistic understanding of the party’s ability to crack the ‘plafond de verre’ at the 2022 Parliamentary elections
Diffuse and Divided Memory: Grassroots Commemoration of the Fosse Ardeatine
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2022.On March 23, 1944, during Rome’s 9-month Nazifascist occupation, Italian Resistance fighters orchestrated a bombing attack on via Rasella which resulted in 33 German casualties. Less than 24 hours later, SS troops retaliatorily executed 335 Italians in a set of abandoned caves now infamously known as the Fosse Ardeatine. The monument inaugurated at the site in 1949 is widely considered to be Italy’s first modern monument as well as an exceedingly rare national Resistance memorial. Yet while the importance of the Mausoleo delle Fosse Ardeatine is indisputable, it is the goal of the present study to recognize the narratives that cannot fit within a univocal monument to a mass tragedy.
To do so, this project will provide an analytic survey of various grassroots commemorative practices used to honor the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine across time. Through a mixed methodological approach that combines art history with memory and reception studies, grassroots commemoration is defined as memorials that have been spontaneously created by extrainstitutional actors rather than official, state-sponsored commission. To first contextualize the need for grassroots commemoration of the massacre, this project will reconstruct the strained dynamics and abundant criticism leveled by the victims’ families towards the monument. In so doing, the dissonance between private and public memory of the Resistance and the competing needs of familial mourning and institutional commemoration becomes clear.
From there, two primary types of grassroots memorials created by familial and political groups in the years following the massacre will be analyzed; spontaneous shrines of portrait photographs placed by the victims’ families in the Fosse Ardeatine caves, and commemorative plaques erected throughout Rome’s urban fabric by the political parties affiliated with the victims. Despite their mutual function as individualized memorials for the massacre victims, the spontaneous shrines and memorial plaques served different audiences and functioned according to fundamentally distinct commemorative logics. The phenomenological experience and rhetorical impact of each memorial format illustrates the simultaneously personal and political functions of grassroots memorials.
Lastly, attacks on Resistance memory from the ‘New Right’ in recent years have meant that Fosse Ardeatine memorials sites are now frequent stages for counter-memory as expressed through acts of revision, vandalism, and, ultimately, destruction. The contestedness of Resistance memory in recent years has, however, also prompted a resurgence of positive iterations of grassroots commemoration for the Fosse Ardeatine and has reframed the massacre’s ethical commemoration as a form of contemporary antifascist activism
Behold: An Interdisciplinary Examination of the Harley Roll T.11
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2022.The Harley Roll T. 11 is a late fifteenth-century manuscript recognized by scholars thatpossess a variety of functions, one of which is a birth girdle – a sacred object that extends Eternalcomfort to women in childbirth. However, due to its various contents, not at all scholarshipagrees that the Harley Roll T.11 was or could have functioned as a birth girdle. Thisdisconnection and simultaneous dependence between the manuscript’s functions and its contents,lead me to ask the question, are manuscripts like the Harley Roll T.11 properly and whollycategorized, and, if not, why? Therefore, this reexamination addresses scholarship discrepanciesregarding the Harley Roll T.11 and its birth-girding function through the sociological lens ofmedieval reception. In addition, the physical properties of such a rare object deserve closerinspection, thus creating a copy of the manuscript will aid in my research
An Unexplored History: The Trastevere Mattei House and its Oak Branch Plaque
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Fall 2022.A lawyer, an art collector, and the head of a government organization, Ilo Giacomo Nunes was a complex man who has for the most part been forgotten. A single plaque, overlooked by hundreds of pedestrians daily, serves as a solitary reminder of his existence. Located on the Mattei House in Piazza in Piscinula, this marble relief, here called the Oak Branch Plaque, is the point of intersection for various narratives taking place across time. It speaks to the long history of the Mattei House, which extends back to the thirteenth century. It allows for an exploration of Trastevere in the nineteenth century, before the Tiber Walls were installed, and it invites an examination of the Fascists’ twentieth-century medieval revival. Bearing an oak branch relief and an inscription dated to 1927, this plaque serves as a lens through which each of these aspects can be examined by systematically uncovering basic identifying information about the plaque. This paper utilizes primary sources not yet explored in scholarship, as it attempts to be the first comprehensive examination of the plaque, Nunes, and the Mattei House. Through this investigation it has been determined that the plaque is most likely a reused marble fragment originating from an ancient context. It was placed on the house sometime between December 25, 1926, and 1930, and commemorates a restoration to the Mattei House undertaken by Ilo Giacomo Nunes in 1927. Finally, the plaque likely found itself in either Nunes’ personal collection or the Mattei of Trastevere’s collection before being inscribed and placed on the southern façade of the Mattei House where it appears today. Bearing a relief that appears ancient and an inscription that is clearly not, this Plaque’s existence invites questions about its history. From this investigation, the contentious and varied life of both the Mattei House and Ilo Giacomo Nunes will once again be brought to light
Being good at being good—The mediating role of an environmental management system in value-creating green supply chain management practices
No full textThis study adopts a resource-based view to explain the complementary role of the corporate structure in the value creation of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices. Using 8-year panel data collected from 317 US international manufacturers, we analyze the influence of GSCM practices on corporate financial performance (CFP) and the mediating role of a certified environmental management system (EMS) in this relationship. We show that GSCM practices have a positive impact on accounting-based financial performance, meaning, return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). In contrast, firms that implement GSCM practices and a certified EMS simultaneously achieve a higher market valuation in terms of Tobin's Q in addition to a higher ROA and ROE in the following year. Our study demonstrates that, through their synergistic combination with a firm's complementary EMS, utilizing GSCM practices can result in intangible assets as sources of long-term financial benefits. Our results have several theoretical and managerial implications. They also address the limitations of the prior use of varying survey-based items for internal and external GSCM practices and add nuance to the existing GSCM practices in the literature
Law of Child Soldiering: Myanmar and Sri Lanka
No full textThesis (B.A. in Political Science, Minor in Legal Studies)--John Cabot University, Spring 2022.Child soldiering is not a new phenomenon, but the legality of it was not considered until very recently. Child soldiers are used by many state actors globally, although there is a push to discourage that, under the ‘Straight 18’ approach, pushed by international actors. The use and recruitment of minors is illegal. The use of child soldiers has been prolific in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, whether currently or in the past. To this end, this essay aims to answer the question: to what extent does international law effectively address the problem of recruitment and use of child soldiers in armed conflict in Myanmar and Sri Lanka? This was undertaken exclusively through secondary sources, including reports from human rights organizations, and texts from international law scholars. The legal norms are well established and clear, and that presents a fair understanding of the approach to be taken in the legal community
Imperial Rule and Long-Run Development: Evidence on the Role of Human Capital in Ottoman Europe
No full textThis study examines the effects of Ottoman imperial rule on long-run development in Europe. Using a novel geographical dataset that tracks territorial changes at the sub-national level over 600 years, we identify a negative effect of Ottoman rule on modern economic performance. Contemporary survey data provides strong support for a causal mechanism involving reduced human capital accumulation. This insight is confirmed by a regression discontinuity analysis using historical data from Romania. We uncover large causal effects of Ottoman rule on literacy rates from the 19th century, which persisted throughout the 20th century. We argue that the late adoption of the printing press in the empire was an important determinant of low human capital accumulation and illustrate this using data on the spread of the printing press
The Sarcophagus of Sidamara : a Case Study in Object Agency and Cultural Expression within the Global Mediterranean
No full textThesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Art and Design)--John Cabot University, Fall 2022.Sarcophagi function not only as a resting place for the deceased, but also as a material trace of funerary rites, conceptions of death and the afterlife. This thesis will focus on the iconographical function and cultural hybridity found in the Sidamara Sarcophagus from the third century CE in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). This elaborate object combines Roman and Asiatic motifs and themes, suggesting an active fusion of cultural expression surrounding visual representation and artistic agency. This thesis focuses on the socio-cultural implications utilized through the global visual language of the Mediterranean as seen in the iconographic and decorative motifs of the Sidamara Sarcophagus. After careful consideration of the extant critical literature on the Sidamara Sarcophagus, this thesis suggests that iconographical analyses and its implications have not been consistent thus far, and thus turns to investigate the object by combining an iconographical approach with that of the modes of cultural expressions, viewership, and object agency of the second and third centuries CE. A comparative analysis of other sarcophagi from Asia Minor and Greco-Roman sites situates the Sidamara Sarcophagus’ iconography as being the result of a proactive fusion of cultures. This thesis extends beyond original iconographical analyses to query the function of viewership, space, and collective memory as it pertains to this funerary object arguing that, here, the Asiatic tradition of high relief ornamental sculpture impacts its standardized Roman iconography, demonstrating a visual language characteristic of the global Mediterranean
Female CEOs Facing Challenges during Covid-19 Pandemic: Differences in Family and Non-Family Firms
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruptive unexpected event that hit firms worldwide. It is necessary starting to investigate on the features of the firms which better allowed companies to face and react to this critical situation. The present study aims at investigating as first whether firm performance is affected by the presence of a female CEO during unexpected critical events, and then by exploring the effects of being a family firm during a crisis period. Moreover, the study aims at exploring also the impact of having a female CEO in case the firm is a family one. In fact, given the rising importance of gender in top managerial levels, more research has been focusing on female leadership. However,stilllittle research exists on female leadership in family firms.An empirical analysis was conducted on a sample of Italian listed firms overathree-yearperiod (2018–2020),which means data were collected and analyzed through the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that female leadership during the pandemic has a positive effect on firm performance.Likewise, family firmsare able to outperform non-family firms during the occurrence of an unexpected critical event