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Association between long-term use of H2 receptor antagonists and prostate cancer risk: a case-control study in Taiwan
Full text linkObjective: The association between long-term use of histamine-2 receptor antagonists and prostate cancer remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the age-specific risk of prostate cancer associated with long-term use of these medications.
Methods: We conducted a nationwide case-control study using Taiwan's Health and Welfare Data Science Center database from 2003 to 2016. Men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer were matched to controls, and long-term use was defined as cumulative exposure of sixty days or more. Adjusted odds ratios were estimated using conditional logistic regression, controlling for comorbidities and medications.
Results: Among 43,578 prostate cancer cases and 174,312 controls, long-term use of histamine-2 receptor antagonists was associated with a modest increase in prostate cancer risk, significant in men aged sixty-five and older (adjusted odds ratio = 1.087, 95% CI: 1.044-1.131) but not in younger groups. Cimetidine and ranitidine were each associated with increased risk in older men, while famotidine showed no significant association across age groups. Notably, cimetidine uses in men aged forty to sixty-four was associated with reduced prostate cancer risk (adjusted odds ratio = 0.865, 95% CI: 0.755-0.990), suggesting possible age-dependent effects.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that long-term use of cimetidine and ranitidine may increase prostate cancer risk in older men, while famotidine was not associated with prostate cancer risk. Risk varies by age and drug type, highlighting the need for drug-specific evaluation in cancer pharmacoepidemiology
Support for SMEs’ contributions to tackling the nature and biodiversity crisis in the fashion and textile industries
No full textAgainst the backdrop of an urgent need for change of the fashion and textile industry towards more sustainability, this report explores how nature positive action can be embedded in Textile and Fashion SMEs. It examines what financial and other support is required to achieve this, and how SMEs can develop their environmental reporting to aid investors and other stakeholders in making decisions.
Given that the main pressures on nature in the fashion and textiles industry occur at the beginning of the value chain, the main focus of this report is on innovative SMEs that seek to transform value chains towards more sustainability, with some attention also given to SME adopters of nature-positive practice (e.g. retailers, brands) and their sourcing practices. The case studies highlight businesses that provide natural fibres from regenerative sources for products and brands. The report draws on a rich qualitative dataset consisting of 28 semi-structured interviews with businesses, financiers and intermediaries, as well as on relevant academic and grey literature
Exploring policy engagement: the impact of public policy and carbon emissions
No full textThe complexity of governance patronage among firms, especially in relation to their policy engagement and its influence on corporate carbon emissions, presents a multifaceted challenge. This study delves into a detailed analysis of how varying levels of policy engagement influences corporate carbon emissions. Our results reveal that intensified policy engagement does not necessarily translate to a reduction in significant carbon emissions but may instead heighten symbolic carbon emissions, a phenomenon more evident in smaller firms. What’s more, we find that carbon awareness reflects a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between corporate policy engagement and substantive carbon emissions. When firms aim to reduce emissions, the effective resources generated by these policy activities will inevitably tilt towards the reduction of substantive emissions reductions. Our research underscores that while strategic policy engagement can yield advantageous outcomes for firms, its effectiveness is heavily reliant on the specific environmental strategies and conditions of each firm
Radical retirement: the reinvention of self after work
No full textRadical Retirement: The Reinvention of Self After Work brings together the voices and experiences of those who have reinvented their professional selves in response to the looming challenges of retirement. The collection offers different stories and reflections that open a variety of perspectives on the topic of retirement. Some of the chapters take the form of a dialogue that asks pertinent questions about leadership roles and invites productive conversation: contributors are not afraid to critique their professions and a society characterized by rapid change. The aim of Radical Retirement is to address the challenges and demands that face professionals as we approach retirement. This study does not approach the topic of retirement in the vein of other multi-authored books or edited collections of essays on a specific topic. Therefore, it does not consist of a series of case studies and accompanying analysis in which professionals showcase the impact of retirement on their working lives. As a collection of stories, this book approaches the topic of retirement in a range of ways. Each chapter challenges outmoded and stale ideas on retirement and promotes visionary ways of reinventing one’s identity in professional life. The stories within the chapters should be treated as a source of inspiration for those who are struggling to imagine life after retirement. Each contributor provides alternatives to the expected next steps and offers ideas for reinvention. Radical Retirement seeks to build on a growing area of research on identity and retirement. Herminia Ibarra’s Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career and Jan Hall and Jon Stokes’ Changing Gear: Creating the Life You Want After a Full-on Career are compelling examples of recent advances in the study of workplace identity and the pressures at critical junctures of a working life. Radical Retirement builds on the scholarship on identity and retirement by challenging the conventional wisdom that a career is a cumulative trajectory of milestones culminating in self-fulfillment. It acknowledges the dark and unspoken in our working trajectories through its recognition of work, not as separate from the private, but as a vital part of our identity. Unlike earlier studies on the topic of retirement, the lessons and stories in this book come directly from the contributors themselves, lending a wide diversity of experiences to the theme of reinvention and retirement. The stories contained in this collection reveal not just the superficial mechanics of abandoning an old path and finding a new one; instead, they go beneath the surface to reveal the emotions fired up by radical life change. They narrate precisely what the encounter of leaping into the unknown felt like
Institutional differences
No full textThe concept of institutional differences has proven effective for understanding cross-national dissimilarities in human resource management (HRM). We point out that this is of particular significance for multinational enterprises (MNEs) aiming for a common mindset across operations located in different institutional settings with locally influenced systems of HRM
Femicide as genocide: dissecting the phenomena of honour-based violence
No full textThis paper investigates honour-based violence (HBV) and ‘honour’ killings in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The phenomenon has increased widely in numerous underdeveloped nations and has become progressively more apparent in the West. The thematic study and mixed methods approach deployed in this study, allowed the researcher to perform in-depth research to fill a gap within the literature. The core of this research is a quantitative survey with 200 women and men respondents, with an additional 55 in-depth qualitative interviews with policy makers, academics, United Nations representatives, and NGO members. Honour-based violence typically entails violent acts perpetrated against women by male family members, with the primary objective being the safeguarding or restoring of the family’s ‘honour’ amongst the wider community. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is the first multi-site cultural and gender studies analysis of HBV in Kurdish and Arab communities in the KRI and was conducted as part of the Marie Sklodowska Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship. To combat violence against women (VAW) and enhance awareness of this urgent humanitarian concern, this study connects its findings to the wider international literature and integrates United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, which aims to empower women and girls
Correlates of maximal driver club head speed in elite male and female golfers: the role of maximal muscle strength, power, and anthropometry
No full textThis study examined associations between driver club head speed (dCHS) and strength, power, and anthropometric measures in elite golfers, analyzed in males and females. Forty-one golfers (22 males, 19 females), including PGA and LPGA Tour professionals, completed a standardized test battery comprising golf swing testing (TrackMan launch monitor), countermovement jump (CMJ), isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP), isometric bench press (IBP), and trunk rotation power testing. In males, dCHS showed very strong associations with trunk rotation peak power (r = 0.89, 95% confidence intervals [0.72; 0.96]), CMJ impulse and peak power (r = 0.78 [0.53; 0.90]), and IMTP peak force (r = 0.75 [0.47; 0.90]), and a strong association with IBP peak force (r = 0.68 [0.35; 0.86]). In females, dCHS correlated strongly with CMJ impulse (r = 0.67 [0.30; 0.87]), CMJ peak force (r = 0.66 [0.28; 0.86]), IBP peak force (r = 0.60 [0.18; 0.83]), and trunk rotation peak power (r = 0.59 [0.16; 0.82]). Median-split analyses confirmed that high-dCHS golfers consistently outperformed those with lower-dCHS across key strength- and power-related measures, with anthropometric variables further differentiating high- from low-dCHS females. These findings highlight both shared and sex-specific associations of dCHS with physical performance in elite golfers and support the use of CMJ, IMTP, IBP, and trunk rotation power testing for profiling and longitudinal monitoring in this population
The ECHR’s Procrustean bed: a final call for perspective in the Chișinău process
No full textCouncil of Europe member states will meet in Chișinău, Moldova, in May 2026 to adopt a political declaration on migration and the European Convention on Human Rights. It marks the first time that states have embarked on a process that, judging by its origins and conduct, can only result in a regression in human rights protection for certain (still ill-defined) categories of migrants and perhaps, in time, for everyone.
The process stems from an Informal Ministerial Conference on 10 December 2025, where states instructed the Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH) to prepare elements for the political declaration.
Here, we argue that the process has not escaped its problematic origins in the politicised sniping at the Court from various capitals. It has been rushed and exclusionary, and brings greater risks than benefits for a system already under pressure. The result has been a narrative driven by certain states without a clear evidential basis, with many silent states yet to reveal their hand publicly. We urge member states to use the remaining weeks to build on points of progress and minimise the scope for unintended consequences, transforming the Chișinău Declaration into something constructive for the Convention system and states alike
The Devil and all his workers: Wheatley’s reactionary right-hand path
No full textThe reactionary credentials of the narrative voice in Wheatley’s Black Magic novels can be in little doubt (Doherty 2022). Repeatedly, the plots of the narratives feature the delivery of characters with conservative values from the evil of the Devil and, particularly, his fellow travellers against all that is ‘good’ and ‘right’ in the traditions of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century (Wisker 1993: 102, 108). The Haunting of Toby Jugg (1948), perhaps, reveals the most explicit – and preposterous – mapping of the political left and right onto occult themes; however, the article proposed here will argue that broadly the same kind of mapping occurs in all of Wheatley’s Black Magic stories, as well as the entire Sallust saga. This mapping is driven by plot elements, but also by the work of representation, in which working-class characters are excluded not just from depiction of individuals’ interactions in an early twentieth-century environment of “snobbery with violence” (Watson 1975) but, especially and most interestingly, from the sphere of geopolitics. The article will show that what is integral to these narratives is the same confusion between view of Bolshevism and Satanism to which H.G. Wells jokingly confessed when considering the writings of Montague Summers (quoted in Baker 2009: 310). It is a confusion dramatized by the abstraction of the worker and the occlusion of the lower classes from world affairs in Wheatley’s narratives
Sign theories: Sebeok
No full textThomas A. Sebeok, the spiritus rector of semiotics, did not set out a strict organon of signs and a programme for their study.
Instead, he pursued an ecumenical doctrine of signs underpinned by theorizing designed to ensure the future of semiotis and its concerns. This article attempts to elucidate Sebeok’s sign theory as it is espoused through numerous writings in a long and busy career. Proceeding from Sebeok’s most explicit statement of a mature sign theory, it presents Sebeok’s theory through his forging of global semiotics, his positing of biosemiotics and his focus on species’ modeling