bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mode of Delivery and Obstetric Outcomes in Asia
Authors: Harper Lorie M , Odibo Anthony O
Published: April 2010

Evaluation of: Lumbiganon P, Laopaiboon M, Gulmezoglu A et al.: Method of delivery and pregnancy outcomes in Asia: the WHO global survey on maternal and perinatal health 2007–2008. Lancet 375(9713), 490–499 (2010). In a multinational survey of 122 medical facilities in nine Asian countries, the WHO analyzed data on 107,950 deliveries. Compared with spontaneous vaginal deliveries, any type of cesarean was associated with a 2.7–14.5-fold increase in the odds of the maternal mortality and morbidity index. Antepartum cesarean with indications and intrapartum cesarean demonstrated similar perinatal outcomes when compared with spontaneous vaginal delivery; patients who underwent an intrapartum cesarean without indication had a 2.1-fold increase in the odds of the perinatal mortality and morbidity index. Cesarean delivery decreased perinatal morbidity when performed for noncephalic presentation. Operative vaginal deliveries were also associated with a 2.1-fold increase in the odds of maternal morbidity or mortality with a concomitant 1.9-fold increase in the odds of perinatal morbidity and mortality.
Sexual Function of Women with Chronic Illness and Cancer
Authors: Basson Rosemary
Published: April 2010

Addressing the sexual sequelae of chronic disease and its treatment is now accepted as a fundamental part of healthcare. Most of the sexual effects of chronic disease are negative, and ongoing illness continues to modulate a woman's sexual self-image, energy and interest in sexual activity, as well as her ability to respond to sexual stimuli with pleasurable sensations, excitement, orgasm and freedom from pain with genital stimulation or intercourse. Nevertheless, for many women with chronic illness, sexuality remains extremely important despite the commonly associated fatigue and acquired sexual dysfunctions; sexual resilience can be substantial. Following recovery from cancer surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, prognosis can be excellent and a return to full health can often be expected, and yet, there may have been devastating changes to sexual function owing to the cancer treatment. Women with metastatic disease may still treasure sexual intimacy. Assessment and management of sexual dysfunction is therefore necessary in all women with chronic illness or past or present cancer.
Immunosuppressive Medications during Pregnancy and Lactation in Women with Autoimmune Diseases
Authors: Elliott Amy B , Chakravarty Eliza F
Published: April 2010

Most autoimmune diseases predominantly affect females. Many of these diseases occur in women who have the potential to become pregnant or wish to plan a pregnancy. The potential for fetotoxic effects of immunosuppressive medications that are commonly used to treat systemic autoimmune diseases must be weighed against the need for control of disease activity during pregnancy and the postpartum period, since active disease can be an independent risk factor for adverse pregnancy outcomes. Although far from conclusive, most data concerning the safety of medications for use during pregnancy come from case series and observational studies. It is often necessary to continue treating patients throughout pregnancy and lactation in order to control the activity of the underlying disease. The aim of this paper is to review the evidence regarding the safety of the most commonly used medications in rheumatic disease during pregnancy or lactation and to enable practitioners and patients to make informed decisions regarding treatment during this period in a woman's life.
A logic with conditional probability operators
Authors: Doder Dragan , Marinkovic Bojan , Maksimovic Petar , Perovic Aleksandar
Published: April 2010

We present a sound and strongly complete axiomatization of a reasoning about linear combinations of conditional probabilities, including comparative statements. The developed logic is decidable, with a PSPACE containment for the decision procedure.
An efficient procedure for mining statistically significant frequent itemsets
Authors: Stanisic Predrag , Tomovic Savo
Published: April 2010

We suggest the original procedure for frequent itemsets generation, which is more efficient than the appropriate procedure of the well known Apriori algorithm. The correctness of the procedure is based on a special structure called Rymon tree. For its implementation, we suggest a modified sort-merge-join algorithm. Finally, we explain how the support measure, which is used in Apriori algorithm, gives statistically significant frequent itemsets.
A counterexample on nontangential convergence for oscillatory integrals
Authors: Johansson Karoline
Published: April 2010

Consider the solution of the time-dependent Schr?dinger equation with initial data f. It is shown by Sj?gren and Sj?lin (1989) that there exists f in the Sobolev space Hs(Rn), s=n/2 such that tangential convergence can not be widened to convergence regions. In this paper we show that the corresponding result holds when -?x is replaced by an operator ?(D), with special conditions on ?.
Light in Captivity: Spectacular Glass and Soviet Power in the 1920s and 1930s
Authors: Chadaga Julia Bekman
Published: April 2010

Exploiting what Jean Starobinski has called the “solar myth” of the revolution, the Soviet regime used the visual power of light within glass to create an exalted vision of Russia's transformation. This article explores the symbolism and the spectacular use of the light bulb (as a material and a discursive entity) in the early Soviet period. Julia Bekman Chadaga traces how the light bulb became an ideological icon and then investigates its treatment in Soviet popular culture and in literary works by Mikhail Zoshchenko, Andrei Platonov, and Iurii Olesha. The Kremlin stars are examined as a monumental manifestation of the Soviet light bulb and a case study illustrating the state's appropriation of religious imagery. While official discourse around the Kremlin stars and “Lenin's little lamps” invokes the conquest of unruly nature and the attainment of divine power via technology produced by the triumphant socialist state, the literary works examined here destabilize the fixed symbolic meaning of captive light.
Story, Time, and Dependent Nationhood in the Uzbek History Curriculum
Authors: Keller Shoshana
Published: April 2010

In the 1950s the Soviet school system stabilized and teachers incorporated non-Russian national histories into the elementary curriculum. Shoshana Keller argues that in Soviet Uzbekistan teachers defined Uzbek nationhood partly through historical narrative, which told children that the Uzbek people had existed continuously from ancient times but the nation achieved independence only under Russian/Soviet leadership. Children learned that for millennia Uzbek hero/martyrs had fought losing batdes against foreign invaders. The best Uzbeks were from the lower classes, but the nation had also produced high culture. Above all, children were taught to imagine themselves, not within Eurasian Islamic historical time, but within European historical time as envisioned by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Iosif Stalin. What children learned about Uzbek history in school was central to the formation of a personal sense of national identity and to the larger Soviet project of nation building.
Finding a Home for Television in the USSR, 1950-1970
Authors: Roth-Ey Kristin
Published: April 2010

In this article, Kristin Roth-Ey explores the complex and often convoluted reception of television technology in the USSR of the 1950s and 1960s. Television held out the potential to fulfill the long-standing dream of a universal Soviet culture—propaganda, art, and science delivered directly to every home—and it offered a compelling symbol of a modern Soviet “way of life” in a Cold War context as well. Soviet consumers and technological enthusiasts embraced the new medium with gusto and played an important role in its promotion. As Roth-Ey elucidates, however, the nature of television production and consumption—and, in particular, the Soviets’ decision to promote a home-based broadcasting system—put television in implicit conflict with important Soviet traditions, ideals, and, at times, interest groups. The development of the mature form of centralized Soviet television symbolized by Moscow's Ostankino complex is the story of how political and cultural elites, consumers, and the Soviet system in an abstract sense struggled to make a “home” for television technology in the USSR.
Genre and Ideology in Vladimír Holan's Red Army Soldiers
Authors: Steiner Peter
Published: April 2010

Among Vladimír Holan's postwar poetic output, the cycle Rudoarmĕjci (Red army soldiers, 1947) enjoys high critical acclaim while the trio of his other works, Dík Sovĕtskému svazu (Thanks to the Soviet Union), Panychida (A memorial service), and the cycle Tobé (To you), is regarded as a crude exercise in propaganda. Peter Steiner argues that the main reason for this evaluative difference is that the genre of the cycle enables Holan to disseminate an ideological message similar to that of the unappreciated trio in a more subtle, less ostentatious manner. The first part of the article analyzes the various techniques of portraiture Holan employed to represent ordinary Russian soldiers (prosopopeia and ethopoeia). In the second part, Steiner discusses the genre's ideological potential. Since portrait by definition must depict an actual human subject, the very selection of the model and his or her features embroils such a work in a specific social reality and reflects the author's attitude toward it. This worldview, however, is not added to the text mechanically, from without, but comprises an integral part of the very mimetic apparatus that generates its overall meaning.
No Outsourcing of Law? WTO Law as Practiced by WTO Courts
Authors: Mavroidis Petros C.
Published: April 2010

This article provides a critical assessment of the corpus of law that the adjudicating bodies of the World Trade Organization (WTO)—the Appellate Body (AB) and panels—have used since the organization was established on January 1, 1995. After presenting a taxonomy of WTO law, I move to discern, and to provide a critical assessment of, the philosophy of the WTO adjudicating bodies, when called to interpret it. In discussing the law that WTO adjudicating bodies have used, I distinguish between sources of WTO law and interpretative elements. This distinction will be explicated in part I below. Part II provides a taxonomy of the sources of WTO law, and part III a taxonomy of the interpretative elements used to illuminate those sources. Part IV concludes.
Regulatory Takings in Institutional Context: Beyond the Fear of Fragmented International Law
Authors: Ratner Steven R.
Published: April 2010

The last decade has witnessed a rebirth of popular and academic interest in the international norms governing expropriation. Debate has centered on the competing claims of corporations, host states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other actors over the extent to which governments may regulate their economies in a manner that affects foreign investment without compensating investors for resulting economic harm. The current controversy over regulatory takings represents the second act in international law’s expropriation battles; whereas the first act comprised the long dispute between North and South over compensation after an overt nationalization, today’s dispute turns on whether a governmental regulation is an expropriation in the first place. This issue is not new to international law, as old diplomatic intercourse and arbitrations demonstrate; but the range of actors making claims, the venues for their resolution, and the outcomes of these processes are more diverse, particular attention having been generated by the case law of arbitrations under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs). Complaints have concerned both the outcomes of disputes and the processes involved in their resolution.
Medellín’s New Paradigm for Treaty Interpretation
Authors: Bederman David J.
Published: April 2010

Much of the scholarly attention given to the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2008 decision in Medellín v. Texas has focused on the Court’s supposed ruling as to the presumptive nonself-execution of international agreements entered into by the United States, and the power of the president to implement such agreements without an act of Congress. Less heed has been paid to the impact and implications of the Court’s reasoning and analysis in interpreting the four international agreements at issue in the case: the 1945 United Nations Charter and Statute of the International Court of Justice, and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and its Optional Protocol. Although the Court’s analysis of the self-execution questions is beyond the scope of my contribution to this Agora, I acknowledge that the jurisprudence of treaty interpretation fits uncomfortably with the calculus of an international agreement’s selfexecution into U.S. law. And while it may seem obscure to view the Medellín decision through the lens of treaty interpretation, that is what truly brings its importance into focus, so that its impact may ultimately be seen as clarifying the established norms of U.S. foreign relations law, particularly in the selection of appropriate sources for treaty construction and the deference to be granted to various foreign relations actors and institutions.
Intent, Presumptions, and Non-Self-Executing Treaties
Authors: Bradley Curtis A.
Published: April 2010

Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1829 decision in Foster v. Neilson, it has been settled that some treaties ratified by the United States are “non-self-executing” and thus are not enforceable in U.S. courts unless implemented by Congress. Despite its pedigree, both the theory behind the self-execution doctrine and its mechanics have long befuddled courts and commentators. There is significant uncertainty, for example, concerning the materials that are relevant to the self-execution analysis, whose intent should count in determining self-executing status, the proper presumption that should be applied with respect to self-execution, and the domestic legal status of a non-self-executing treaty.
Revitalizing The U.S. Compliance Power
Authors: Charnovitz Steve
Published: April 2010

Although “[tjreaties are the law of the land, and a rule of decision in all courts,” the president and the courts may sometimes be powerless to achieve compliance with a U.S. treaty. That was the puzzling outcome of Medellin v. Texas. Even though the Supreme Court declared that the United States has an international obligation to comply with the Avena judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Court invalidated the president’s memorandum directing Texas and other errant states to comply.
Reevaluating Regional Human Rights Litigation in the Twenty-First Century: The Case of the Inter-American Court
Authors: Cavallaro James L. , Brewer Stephanie Erin
Published: April 2010

Over the past few decades, regional human rights tribunals have grown in both number and activity. The European Court of Human Rights (European Court or ECHR) now receives tens of thousands of petitions and issues over fifteen hundred judgments on the merits each year. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently tripled the number of cases that it resolves annually. At the time of this writing, in mid-2008, Africa’s own regional human rights court, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, prepares to begin hearing its first contentious cases. Currently, sixty-eight states are subject to the decisions of the two established regional courts (forty-seven in Europe and twenty-one in the Americas), up from less than half that number twenty years ago. In the nascent African system, twenty-four African Union member states have ratified the Protocol establishing the African Court, with an additional twenty-five signatory states.
Islands of Effective International Adjudication: Constructing an Intellectual Property Rule of Law in the Andean Community
Authors: Helfer Laurence R. , Alter Karen J. , Guerzovich M. Florencia
Published: April 2010

Forty years ago, the small and underdeveloped nations on the mountainous western edge of South America formed a regional integration pact to promote economic growth, regulate foreign investment, and harmonize national laws. Overall, their enterprise has not turned out well. Riven by political schisms, economic shocks, and weak domestic legal and judicial systems, the five principal countries of the Andean Community—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador,Peru, and Venezuela— have failed to live up to their potential as South America's second largest trading bloc. The member states have relaunched the Andean integration project and revised its policies on multiple occasions, with at best only mixed results. Not surprisingly, most commentators have ignored the Andean Community or dismissed it as a failure.
The Cave-Dwellers’ Treasure: Folktales, Morality, and Gender in a Nahua Community in Mexico
Authors: Raby Dominique
Published: April 2010

In Nahua communities, both men and women may act as storytellers, but female storytellers are fewer and perform in more intimate contexts. As a result, there is to date no analysis of female Nahua storytelling. In this article, the author compares two cognate folktales and underlines how each storyteller, a woman and a man, deal with essential concepts related to morality and supernatural beings. Recent studies on women’s folklore point out that women’s discourse often takes place in a private context and uses ambiguity as an expressive strategy; this ambiguity, in turn, is linked to the immorality or illegitimacy attributed to women’s words by many societies. The Nahua case, however, suggests that Nahua female storytellers, although performing privately, prefer a discourse that stresses themes of morality, while some publicly renowned male storytellers may express ambiguous and amoral feelings. Ultimately, this disparity can be tied to the ambivalent opinion Nahuas hold toward the Hispanic world and to recent changes in female identity.
A Sense of Place: Mapping Hawai’I on the National Mall
Authors: Diamond Heather A.
Published: April 2010

Site design is an essential but overlooked underpinning to the festival-making process at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Through effective layout, structures, and captioning, spatial strategies undergird a program concept and crystallize the interpretive frame for performance. This article traces the 1989 Hawai’i program’s site design from the initial concept to the preperformance stage. It examines the tension between hegemonic festival parameters and the organizers’ efforts to problematize colonially inflected narratives, and it argues that rather than being a passive backdrop for performance, the Hawai’i program site design was a discursive field rife with contradiction and conflict.
Beyond Tarzan and National Geographic: The Politics and Poetics of Presenting African Diasporic Cultures on the Mall
Authors: Thompson Krista A.
Published: April 2010

At the Festival of American Folklife, presenters are key mediators between culture bearers and festival visitors, fostering, in theory, dialogic cultural exchange. Examining the African Immigrant Folklife Program (1997), I evaluate the successes and failures of the presenter’s position and the specific challenges of presenting African diasporic cultures at the festival. This first scholarly investigation of this key role concludes that many visitors overlook the presenters as they visually consume the sights on the Mall.
Legendry and the Rhetoric of Truth
Authors: Oring Elliott
Published: April 2010

The genre of legend has long been defined in relation to truth and belief, and legend scholars have noted some of the devices that serve to establish legend credibility. In fact, legend employs an extensive rhetoric in establishing its truth, and this essay aims to provide a comprehensive description of the tropes of this rhetoric in terms of Aristotle’s categories of persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos. Illustrations of these tropes are presented with a discussion of their characteristics. Scholarly attempts to define the legend genre might abandon truth and belief as criteria in favor of a performance of truth realized with this rhetoric.
Grove Street Grimm: Grand Theft Auto and Digital Folklore
Authors: Miller Kiri
Published: April 2010

This article investigates the "Grand Theft Auto" videogame series in order to demonstrate the potential of a folkloristic, ethnographic approach for the analysis of digital games. I discuss "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" as a story collection, a frame for performance, a virtual museum of vernacular culture, and a widely circulated pop culture artifact whose double-voiced aesthetic has given rise to diverse interpretive communities. This case study suggests that digital gameplay should be regarded as a form of performance practice with the capacity to invoke traditional folkloric genres and engender new traditions.
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers in Maithil Women’s Expressive Forms
Authors: Davis Coralynn V.
Published: April 2010

Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women there. I argue that in Maithil women’s folktales, as in their paintings, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women’s perspectives and the importance of women’s knowledge and influence in shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into interpretive conversation the multitude of expressive forms exercised by Maithil women enhances analytical access to Maithil women’s collective perspectives on their social and cosmological worlds.
Running Again, Roasting Again, Touching Again: On Repetition, Heightened Affective Expressivity, and the Utility of the Notion of Linguaculture in Navajo and Beyond
Authors: Webster Anthony K.
Published: April 2010

This article analyzes a Coyote narrative told by John Watchman to Edward Sapir in Navajo. While it has been widely documented that Navajo curing ways are tightly organized by the use of repetition, there has been far less investigation of repetition in other genres of Navajo verbal art. This article shows that the use of pairing and the semeliterative aspect create a sense of completion in Watchman’s narrative. It is argued that repetition may occur in a variety of Navajo genres of verbal art, but that it may serve differing rhetorical functions there. Ethnopoetic structuring is therefore an expression of linguaculture (the overlapping of language and culture). To return to these texts then allows one to place such narratives within the contexts of the linguaculture of which they are a part.
Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1939
Authors: Dragostinova Theodora
Published: April 2010

In this article Theodora Dragostinova examines the interplay between official policies and popular demands in the nationalization of the Greek minority in Bulgaria. She explores why national activists and ordinary people chose to “speak national” in the context of the conflicting national interests and territorial aspirations of Bulgaria and Greece. At the official level, the national discourse and practice showed the co-existence of essentialist and constructionist understandings of nationhood; while the rhetoric of the primordial nation was ubiquitous, politicians realized that certain policies could “improve” the national body. At the popular level, the profuse use of national rhetoric functioned as an “emergency identity,” or a discursive strategy that allowed individuals to claim social legitimacy in emergency situations. Thus, despite the fact that people were forced to adopt clear-cut national allegiances, national side-switching remained a frequent phenomenon.
Heroic Aesthetics and Modernist Critique: Extrapolations from Bakhtin'sAuthor and Hero in Aesthetic Activity
Authors: Kliger Ilya
Published: April 2010

Ilya Kliger addresses the question of Mikhail Bakhtin's intervention in modernist discourse by taking a step back from Bakhtin's views on modernist literature and outlining instead a more general Bakhtinian conception of the modernist condition as characterized by what Kliger calls “a crisis of authorship.” The article focuses on Bakhtin's early work in narratological aesthetics and situates it within thelongue duréecontext of debates about the status of the subject of aesthetic experience and, more generally, of knowledge, debates that can provisionally be seen as originating at the end of the eighteenth century and coming to a head within the intellectual and creative milieu of twentieth-century modernism. Early Bakhtin helps us formulate a specifically modernist—by contrast with what will be called “transcendental” and “realist“—critique, a critique not limited to the field of literary analysis alone but applying to all forms of thinking that either presuppose abstract subject-object division or rely on modes of synthetic reconciliation.
Masks of the Poet, Myths of the People: The Performance of Individuality and Nationhood in Georgian and Russian Modernism
Authors: Ram Harsha
Published: April 2010

Georgian and Russian modernisms engaged in a conversation that was by no means one-way and in which the chronological development and aesthetic premises of Russian symbolism became curiously inverted. Piecing together this forgotten dialogue allows us to recover a neglected crosscultural and properly Eurasian dimension of the Silver Age. Russians and Georgians alike invoked the mask as a theatrical form and myth as a narrative structure to articulate problems of individual, collective, and national identity. Mask and myth shared two distinct and somewhat incompatible genealogies, the one deriving from the Italian commedia dell'arte and the other from Friedrich Nietzsche's reading of Greek tragedy, both of which corresponded in turn to a typically Russian tension between the “decadent” and “mythopoetic” redactions of symbolism. These genealogies were critically adapted by the Georgians in an attempt to address the perceived needs of Georgian national culture. Aesthetic and philosophical problems concerning the semiotics of the name, the nature of the poetic persona, and the structure of myth came to be related to wider questions proper to an era of crisis and transition: modernity and historical belatedness, the dynamics of cultural importation, the gendered nature of nationhood, and the vexed relationship between popular culture and modernism as an elite cultural formation.
Lyricism and Philosophy in Brodsky's Elegiac Verse
Authors: Beaver Aaron
Published: April 2010

In this article Aaron Beaver analyzes two elegies written by Joseph Brodsky—one for his father (“Pamiati ottsa: Avstraliia“) and one for his mother (“Mysl’ o tebe udaliaetsia …“). The point of departure is Brodsky's appropriation of the genre from his Silver Age predecessors (Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandel'shtam, Marina Tsvetaeva), as made evident in a number of Brodsky's well-known essays. Beaver's central thesis is that Brodsky reshapes the elegy by centering it not on the death of the loved one but on time. Brodsky is inspired in this endeavor by his Silver Age forebears, but he extends their poetic practice into more philosophical territory. Specifically, close reading of Brodsky's two elegies exposes a model of time consistent with the temporal idealism elaborated by Jean- Paul Sartre inBeing and Nothingness.Based on this exegesis Beaver ventures to generalize about the nature of lyricism in Brodsky's verse, arguing that it is inseparable from his philosophical assumptions.
Comment: Of Archives and Frogs: Iconoclasm in Historical Perspective
Authors: Hellbeck Jochen
Published: April 2010

Sheila Fitzpatrick's reflections make for illuminating reading as an autobiographical text. Two basic forces, she suggests, have shaped her as a researcher over the years and were present at the inception of a tremendously productive scholarly career. These two forces in combination may also better define her research agenda than the much used and abused term revisionism. One of them is positive; it is her belief in the archive as a repository of historical truth. From this belief flows her conviction that good historians are empiricists who engage in "lots of hard work on primary sources." Fitzpatrick herself has played a pivotal role in accessing ever new source materials and suggesting ways of making them speak; there are few Soviet historians who can match her first-hand archival expertise.
Tendentious Modernism: Karel Teige's Path to Functionalism
Authors: Zusi Peter
Published: April 2010

The category of tendentiousness—with its dogmatic, didactic, and aesthetically conservative inclinations—seems inherently opposed to the logic of modernism, which emphasized the aesthetic moment of formal innovation. While many modernists argued for the compatibility between aesthetic and political revolution, they invariably met the skepticism of those demanding a clear, ůnambiguously expressed political message from art. But was this conceptual divide unbridgeable? In this article, Peter Zusi explores this question through the case of the Czech theorist of the interwar avant-garde, Karel Teige. Teige exemplifies how the early Czech avant-garde adopted such terms asfunctionandpopular character(lidovost)from nineteenth-century Czech discourse, where they had served to celebrate the tendentious applicability of cultural artifacts to a political movement of emancipation. For Teige, however, these terms quickly shifted from accentuating to critiquing political tendentiousness. Teige's shift, Zusi argues, does not represent the trace of cultural belatedness or conceptual confusion as much as it reveals the flexibility of conceptual oppositions too often conceived as static.
The Perception of Emotional Coldness in Andrei Turgenev's Diaries
Authors: Zorin Andrei
Published: April 2010

In this article, Andrei Zorin discusses the generational shift in the techniques of self-analysis that occurred in Russia at the turn from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries as revealed in the diaries of Andrei Turgenev, a document that has attracted the attention of many scholars but still remains largely unpublished. Young Turgenev was influenced both by his upbringing in the circles of Moscow Freemasons and by the literature of German Sturm und Drang and especially by the early tragedies by Friedrich Schiller. In his self-reflections, his dramatic love story, and his attempts to translate Alexander Pope'sEloisa to Abelardinto Russian, Turgenev demonstrated his quest to resemble his favorite literary characters and the despair caused by his failure to meet these self-imposed standards. Both his quest and his personality as revealed in the diaries can serve as a symbol of the new emotional culture that emerged in Russia and became prevalent there throughout the Romantic age.
Fear: Soldiers and Emotion in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Military Psychology
Authors: Plamper Jan
Published: April 2010

This article provides an analysis of the locus of fear in military psychology in late imperial Russia. After the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution, the debate coalesced around two poles: “realists” (such as the military psychiatrist Grigorii Shumkov) argued that fear was natural, while “romantics” upheld the image of constitutionally fearless soldiers. Jan Plamper begins by identifying the advent of modern warfare (foreshadowed by the Crimean War) and its engendering of more and different fears as a key cause for a dramatic increase in fear-talk among Russia's soldiers. He links these fears to literature, which offered—most prominentiy in Lev Tolstoi'sSevastopol Sketches(1855)—some of the vocabulary soldiers could use to express their fears. Mikhail Dragomirov's fear-centered military theory during the Great Reforms was the next milestone. Plamper closes by sketching the history of fear after World War I, from Iosif Stalin's penal battalions to the rehabilitation of military psychology under Nikita Khrushchev and beyond.
Poetics of Disgust: To Eat and Die in Andrei Belyi'sPetersburg
Authors: Matich Olga
Published: April 2010

The article examines the aversive emotion of disgust and its deployment in the visual arts and in the premier Russian modernist novel, Andrei Belyi'sPetersburg,which has not been considered in regard to its affective poetics before. Based on recent studies of the emotions in cultural history and theory, it explores the philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic aspects of disgust as a response to something viscerally and/or morally repugnant. The emotion, induced by the experience seen or imagined close up, provokes the observer's recoil as defined by cultural norms. As such, disgust is performative in spatial terms. Olga Matich argues that movement away from the loathsome image or idea affords the possibility of making the experience cognitively readable or legible, that disgust creates a space in which the individual negotiates her emotional as well as moral response. Yet she claims that aesthetically—and in certain instances ethically—disgust, which is always about the boundaries of the permissible, is also liberating: it offers society, its artists, and their consumers the opportunity to transgress established norms. Through extensive close readings ofPetersburg,Matich shows that Belyi's experimental novel does precisely that, challenging the reader not to avert her readerly gaze from that which is unsettling and to appreciate, even to delight in, his shocking metamorphic image-making. She callsPetersburg amodernist exemplar of baroque aesthetics, characterized by excessive affect and grotesque representation, especially of the corpse, invoking the transience of life and dissolution of form.
Resveratrol Inhibits Neuronal Apoptosis and Elevated Ca2+/Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase II Activity in Diabetic Mouse Retina
Authors: Kim Young-Hee , Kim Yoon-Sook , Kang Sang-Soo , Cho Gyeong-Jae , Choi Wan-Sung
Published: April 2010

OBJECTIVE

This study investigated the effects of resveratrol, a natural polyphenol with neuroprotective properties, on retinal neuronal cell death mediated by diabetes-induced activation of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

Diabetes was induced in C57BL/6 mice by five consecutive intraperitoneal injections of 55 mg/kg streptozotocin (STZ). Control mice received buffer. All mice were killed 2 months after the injections, and the extent of neuronal cell death, CaMKII, and phospho-CaMKII protein expression levels and CaMKII kinase activity were examined in the retinas. To assess the role of CaMKII in the death of retinal neurons, a small-interfering RNA (siRNA) or specific inhibitor of CaMKII was injected into the right vitreous humor, and vehicle only was injected into the left vitreous humor, 2 days before death. Resveratrol (20 mg/kg) was administered by oral gavage daily for 4 weeks, beginning 1 month after the fifth injection of either STZ or buffer.

RESULTS

The death of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), CaMKII, phospho-CaMKII protein levels, and CaMKII activity were all greatly increased in the retinas of diabetic mice compared with controls, 2 months after induction of diabetes. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL)-positive signals co-localized with CaMKII- and phospho-CaMKII immunoreactive RGCs. However, in addition to CaMKII knockdown and inhibition by siRNA or a specific inhibitor, respectively, resveratrol provided complete protection from diabetes-induced retinal cell death.

CONCLUSIONS

In the present study, resveratrol prevented diabetes-induced RGC death via CaMKII downregulation, implying that resveratrol may have potential therapeutic applications for prevention of diabetes-induced visual dysfunction.
Risks of Overweight and Abdominal Obesity at Age 16 Years Associated With Prenatal Exposures to Maternal Prepregnancy Overweight and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
Authors: Pirkola Jatta , Pouta Anneli , Bloigu Aini , Hartikainen Anna-Liisa , Laitinen Jaana , Järvelin Marjo-Riitta , Vääräsmäki Marja
Published: April 2010

OBJECTIVE

The associations of prenatal exposures to maternal prepregnancy overweight and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) with offspring overweight are controversial. Research estimating risk for offspring overweight due to these exposures, separately and concomitantly, is limited.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

Prevalence of overweight and abdominal obesity at age 16 years and odds ratios (ORs) for prenatal exposures to maternal prepregnancy overweight and GDM were estimated in participants of the prospective longitudinal Northern Finland Birth Cohort of 1986 (N = 4,168).

RESULTS

The prevalence and estimates of risk for overweight and abdominal obesity were highest in those exposed to both maternal prepregnancy overweight and GDM (overweight prevalence 40% [OR 4.05], abdominal obesity prevalence 25.7% [3.82]). Even in offspring of mothers with a normal oral glucose tolerance test during pregnancy, maternal prepregnancy overweight is associated with increased risk for these outcomes (overweight prevalence 27.9% [2.56], abdominal obesity prevalence 19.5% [2.60]). In offspring of women with prepregnancy normal weight, the prevalence or risks of the outcomes were not increased by prenatal exposure to GDM. These estimates of risk were adjusted for parental prepregnancy smoking, paternal overweight, and offspring sex and size at birth.

CONCLUSIONS

Maternal prepregnancy overweight is an independent risk factor for offspring overweight and abdominal obesity at age 16 years. The risks are highest in offspring with concomitant prenatal exposure to maternal prepregnancy overweight and GDM, whereas the risks associated with GDM are only small.
Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Disease in 7,454 Patients With Type 1 Diabetes
Authors: Eeg-Olofsson Katarina , Cederholm Jan , Nilsson Peter M. , Zethelius Björn , Svensson Ann-Marie , Gudbjörnsdóttir Soffia , Eliasson Björn
Published: April 2010

OBJECTIVE

We assessed the association between A1C and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in an observational study of patients with type 1 diabetes followed for 5 years.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

A total of 7,454 patients were studied from the Swedish National Diabetes Register (aged 20–65 years, diabetes duration 1–35 years, followed from 2002 to 2007).

RESULTS

Hazard ratios (HRs) for fatal/nonfatal coronary heart disease (CHD) per 1% unit increase in baseline or updated mean A1C at Cox regression analysis were 1.31 and 1.34 and 1.26 and 1.32, respectively, for fatal/nonfatal CVD (all P < 0.001 after adjustment for age, sex, diabetes duration, blood pressure, total and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, BMI, smoking, and history of CVD). HRs were only slightly lower for CHD (P = 0.002) and CVD (P = 0.002–0.007) after also adjusting for albuminuria. Adjusted 5-year event rates of CHD and CVD increased progressively with higher A1C, ranging from 5 to 12%, as well as when subgrouped by shorter (1–20 years) or longer (21–35 years) duration of diabetes. A group of 4,186 patients with A1C 5–7.9% (mean 7.2) at baseline showed risk reductions of 41% (95% confidence intervals: 15–60) (P = 0.005) for fatal/nonfatal CHD and 37% (12–55) (P = 0.008) for CVD, compared with 3,268 patients with A1C 8–11.9% (mean 9.0), fully adjusted also for albuminuria.

CONCLUSIONS

This observational study of patients in modern everyday clinical practice demonstrates progressively increasing risks for CHD and CVD with higher A1C, independently of traditional risk factors, with no J-shaped risk curves. A baseline mean A1C of 7.2% showed considerably reduced risks of CHD and CVD compared with A1C 9.0%, emphasizing A1C as a strong independent risk factor in type 1 diabetes.
Prevention of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome in a rat model: efficacy comparison between cabergoline and meloxicam
Authors: SAYLAN ARIF , ARIOZ DAGISTAN TOLGA , KOKEN TULAY , DILEK HUSNIYE , SAYLAN FILIZ , YILMAZER MEHMET
Published: April 2010

Objective. To compare the efficacy of cabergoline (Cb2) and meloxicam in curbing vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression and preventing ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). Design. Randomized controlled, animal study. Setting. Academic facility. Sample. We used a total of 50 immature Wistar female rats randomly to create an experimental OHSS model. Methods. Ten rats each formed the control group and mild OHSS group. The remaining 30 were separated into three equal groups of severe OHSS. Mild and severe OHSS were induced through ovarian stimulation with gonadotropins. One group with severe OHSS was administered a low‐dose 100 μg/kg Cb2 therapy; another group with severe OHSS received 600 μg/kg meloxicam. Body weight, vascular permeability (VP), VEGF expression, ovary weight, and diameter were then compared. Main outcome measures. The efficacy of Cb2 and meloxicam for preventing OHSS. Results. Comparison of the severe OHSS groups with the controls and mild OHSS group revealed significant increases in VEGF expression, VP, ovary weight, and diameter. The increase in VEGF expression was demonstrated to be dependent on human chorionic gonadotropin doses. However, low‐dose Cb2 and meloxicam therapies were shown to be ineffective in decreasing VEGF expression and VP, ovary weight, and ovary diameter in severe OHSS. Conclusions. VEGF elevation played a critical part in OHSS pathogenesis, but the therapies administered failed to curb VEGF expression.
Provision of contraception: a survey among primary care physicians in Finland
Authors: SANNISTO TUIRE , KOSUNEN ELISE
Published: April 2010

Objective. To investigate self‐reported practices of contraceptive provision among primary care physicians. Design. A cross‐sectional questionnaire study. Setting. All community health centers (n = 63) in an university hospital area in Western Finland. Sample and methods. A total of 122 health center physicians involved in contraceptive counseling (CC) were invited to participate in self‐administered survey. Data were obtained on initiation of contraceptive methods and the limits and contraindications applied when prescribing combined hormonal contraception (CHC), and they were assessed against Finnish and WHO guidelines. Main outcome measures. Distribution of initiated contraceptive methods and of examinations and tests included, application of limits and contraindications in relation to age, smoking, body mass index or weight, blood pressure (BP) and migraine with aura when prescribing CHC (combined oral contraceptives (COCs), vaginal ring and contraceptive patch). Results. Responded physicians (n = 83.68%) said they most frequently prescribed the COC pill. Progestin‐only pills, levonorgestrel‐releasing intrauterine system and copper‐releasing intrauterine device were also provided regularly. Most of the respondents routinely took numerous examinations and tests when initiating contraception, including also unnecessary ones. There were gaps in their knowledge about the limits and contraindications for CHC. For example, 41% of the respondents did not recognize migraine with aura as a contraindication and only 19% reported applying the recommended BP limit of 140/90 mmHg. Conclusions. The range of contraceptives available and examinations and tests offered were comprehensive. However, the inadequate procedures regarding assessment of contraindications for CHC suggests that updating CC practices is challenging in primary care.
Aromatic Plant Trade and Livelihood Strategies in Rural Nepal: A Case of Wintergreen in Dolakha District
Authors: Subedi Madhusudan
Published: April 2010

The objective of this paper is to assess opportunities for Wintergreen, a natural product's intervention on poverty reduction, strengthening local governance, and improving resource management. DOI: 10.3126/opsa.v11i0.3032 Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11 2009 84-103
Democracy in Cage: Towards a Framework for a State Restructuring in Nepal
Authors: Pandey Tulsi Ram
Published: April 2010

"State Restructuring" has appeared as one of the important issues currently in vogue in public debates of Nepal. The "People's War" waged by Maoist political organization against existing system of governance has been the most important contributory factor to initiate this type of debate. The failure of existing state organization to settle the issues raised by people by way of this rebellion is also equally responsible for further stimulating this debate. However, a chain of political events happened in the country in a series of sequences during the period covered by this rebellion. Consequently, there has been a progressive growth in the number of participants involved in this debate and the type of demand posed by them towards restructuring the state. DOI: 10.3126/opsa.v11i0.3035 Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11 2009 148-177
Local Movements, Political Processes and Transformation: A Case Study of Bhaktapur Municipality
Authors: Dhakal Suresh , Pokharel Sanjeev
Published: April 2010

The people of Nepal have witnessed a number of political shifts within a comparatively short period of the country's history. The political revolution of 1950, which precedes all important political movements, eliminated the century-long Rana oligarchy and established the multiparty system. In 1960, late King Mahendra abolished the newly established multi-party system and implemented his own model of governance called the Panchayat system. The Panchayat system was designed to allow the King to rule the country according to his will, and the system alienated ordinary people from political processes. This system, too, came to an end after the popular movement of 1990 (widely known as jana andolan) which re-established the multi-party system in the country. DOI: 10.3126/opsa.v11i0.3036 Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11 2009 178-201
Macro Development and Micro Social Processes: Development as Discourse in Nepal
Authors: Ghimire Sujan
Published: April 2010

This paper points out that to understand development processes, examining aid impacts at local level is as important as studying the impacts of development at the macro level. Studying development at local levels entails understanding the different societal processes triggered off by aid including the undesired and unplanned consequences. DOI: 10.3126/opsa.v11i0.3038 Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11 2009 221-243
The Anthropology of Tacit Knowledge in the Domestic Mandala: A Case Study of Chhetris in the Kathmandu Valley
Authors: Gray John
Published: April 2010

'For our house is our corner of the world ... it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word.' Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space 'We know more than we can tell.' Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension The epigraphs encapsulate the two major themes of this paper. As Bachelard's quotation suggests, Chhetri houses are not simply functional places for everyday living. Instead, the house and its surrounding compound are also an encompassing cosmos in which Chhetris of the Kathmandu Valley dwell and come to understand its fundamental principles.1 In their everyday activities of preparing, cooking and eating rice, Chhetri Householders spatially configure their domestic compounds into mandalas-sacred diagrams that are simultaneously maps of the cosmos and machines for revealing the truth of cosmos as a fundamental unity. At the same time, such everyday dwelling in a domestic mandalas is productive of knowledge of the cosmos they represent. DOI: 10.3126/opsa.v11i0.3040 Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11 2009 255-278