1,721,037 research outputs found

    The ‘China’ question in mobile Internet standard-making: Insights from expert interviews

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    This article explores the actions of Chinese stakeholders as norm entrepreneurs in mobile Internet standard-making within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Through semi-structured interviews with key experts from the Internet stakeholder communities, this article contextualises a rapidly transforming and increasingly politicised issue in the broader context of China's engagement with the global multistakeholder Internet governance architecture, as well as the debate on China's rise in the Liberal International Order. Furthermore, it incorporates the views and experiences of technologists working first-hand in standard-making, as they are often disregarded in political-scientific literature. Through the analytical lens of cognitivist regime theory, this article argues that the stronger China and Chinese stakeholders grow economically and politically, the more they become involved in the existing Internet governance regime complex, increasing their influence in the existing institutional arrangements without necessarily acting for changing their norms, rules, and principles. Through these theoretical and methodological approaches, new light is shed on the role of private and public Chinese stakeholders and on the relation between them

    Digital sovereignty and Internet standards: normative implications of public-private relations among Chinese stakeholders in the Internet Engineering Task Force

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    (How) are Chinese actors contributing to increased state influence in Internet standard-making? In its open and private-based dimension, the Internet is possibly the twenty-first century’s epitome of the liberal international order in its global spatial dimension. Therefore, many see deep normative challenges deriving from the rise of powerful, non-liberal actors such as China. In particular, China and Chinese stakeholders are often portrayed as supporters and promoters of a multilateral Internet governance model based on digital sovereignty aimed at completely replacing the existing multistakeholder, private-based model. Academic views on this topic have become less dichotomous throughout the years, especially as China’s position on it has become more nuanced. However, this academic and policy debate is still open. This article analyses Chinese stakeholder actions in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the key venue for Internet standard-making. Through network analysis, this article maps the engagement of Chinese stakeholders in selected working groups of the IETF over time. Through expert interviews, this article interprets the drivers, evolution, and impact of such engagement. This research yields two main findings: first, it shows that the Chinese government does not have full control of its domestic private actors, among which there is both collaboration and conflict. Second, it concludes that Chinese stakeholders have increasingly accepted the existing functioning of IETF standard-making as they grew influential within it

    Normal cholesterol levels in the immediate postpartum period: A risk factor for depressive and anxiety symptoms?

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    We aimed to ascertain if cholesterol levels within the reference standards for healthy non-pregnant women are a risk factor for depressive and anxiety symptoms in the immediate postpartum period. During the first week after delivery, total cholesterol levels of 120 new mothers were measured and their mood state was assessed with the Profile of Mood States (POMS). Two weeks before delivery, mothers' personal and family history of mood disturbances was assessed with the Maternal History of Mood Disturbances (MHMD) scale. Only 26 (22%) of the new mothers had normal cholesterol levels (<= 200 mg/dL). Mothers with normal levels did not differ on psychometric measures from those with high levels. However, in the subgroup of mothers with normal cholesterol, those with lower levels experienced more symptoms of anxiety, depression and fatigue and scored higher on the MHMD scale. In the larger group of mothers with high cholesterol levels, history of mood disturbances and postpartum depressive and anxiety symptoms were not correlated with total cholesterol. Measuring cholesterol levels in the peripartum can be useful to identify a subgroup of women with naturally low cholesterol levels and an increased risk for postpartum depressive and anxiety symptoms

    Maternal attachment style and psychiatric history as independent predictors of mood symptoms in the immediate postpartum period

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    Background: There is evidence that both a past history of psychiatric illness and insecure attachment put women at risk for mood disturbances in the postpartum period. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether maternal insecure attachment is a risk factor for mood symptoms in the immediate postpartum period independently of the confounding effect of maternal psychiatric history.Methods: A convenience sample of 120 mothers was assessed prenatally with the Maternal History of Mood Disturbances (MHMD), the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), and in the first week after delivery with the Profile of Mood States (POMS).Results: Mothers with higher scores on the preoccupied and fearful attachment scales had more severe postpartum anxiety and depression symptoms but only fearful attachment remained a significant predictor of postpartum anxiety when the significant effect of maternal history of mood disturbances was included in the model.Limitations: Our diagnostic assessment focused on mood symptoms, not disorders, and we limited psychometric assessment to the immediate postpartum period and did not collect longitudinal data to ascertain whether the relationship between maternal insecure attachment and postpartum mood disturbances changed over time.Conclusions: Our results show the necessity to assess prior psychiatric symptoms in studies of maternal attachment style and postpartum mood disturbances. The finding that a mother's recall of her own psychiatric history emerged as significant predictor of postpartum mood symptoms suggests that antenatal assessment based on maternal self-report can be used in those settings where structured diagnostic interviews are not feasible

    Quo Vadis Sovreignty? New Conceptual and Regulatory Boundaries in the Age of Digital China

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    Digital sovereignty is all the hype in scholarly, policy, and industry debates. The evolution of sovereignty and state practices in relation to the raise of digital technologies in everyday life and the everyday conduction of policymaking has raised compelling issues in philosophical, legal, political, and sociological terms. Given this situation, there is an increasing need to investigate the topic of digital sovereignty from a multidisciplinary perspective. Scholars from Europe and China from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, such as law, political science, China studies, and media studies, as well as practitioners of the telecommunications sector, debate in the book perspectives on China and digital sovereignty adopting an interdisciplinary approach

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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