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Disappointment and bitterness, mixed with envy and a desperate hope for a better future, are the night soil in which demagogues are hatched. But despite their populist bluster, demagogues are saboteurs of democracy, driven by an urge to ditch and destroy the checks and balances vital to restraining abuses of power. Unless checked, demagogues are the harbingers of a new, 21st-century form of despotism: a corrupted, phantom democracy in which periodic elections are held but the rich become super-rich and omnipotent—while most of the populace is gripped by feelings of powerlessness when it comes to the big decisions shaping everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to leading asset pricing theories, recent empirical evidence indicates that financial markets compensate only short-term equity variance risk. An equilibrium model with generalized disappointment aversion risk preferences and rare events reconciles salient features of the variance term structure. In addition, a calibration explains the variance and skew risk premiums in equity returns and the implied volatility skew of index options while capturing standard moments of fundamentals, equity returns, and the risk-free rate. The key intuition for the results stems from substantial countercyclical risk aversion induced by endogenous variation in the probability of disappointing events in consumption growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis involves studying how people maintain not knowing what they "know." As a result, how psychoanalytic psychotherapists orient toward what their patients may be experiencing but cannot say is at the core of psychoanalytic praxis. Jeremy Safran's unique psychoanalytic sensibilities were a model for how to yield to feeling states and relational dynamics that are at the heart of therapeutic action, but which all too frequently get bypassed. This brief recollection highlights how Safran's commitment to open inquiry and mutuality—not just with his patients but also with his students—continues to impact the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the attitudes, behaviours and experiences of infertile women towards sexuality. Methods: This study was carried out in the infertility outpatient clinic of a state hospital in Istanbul of Turkey. Fifteen infertile women who had been receiving primary infertility treatment for at least two years and were actively continuing infertility treatment were included in the study. Data were collected by means of an detailed information form and a semi-structured interview. Content analysis was applied to the data obtained from semi-structured interviews. Consistency percentage calculation was made between the codes and themes determined by 4 researchers who are experts in their fields. Results: Results based on the interviews with the participants, 2 main themes, 6 sub-themes and 27 codes related to sub-themes were determined as 'Factors Affecting Sexual Life' and 'Overview of Sexual Health and Sexuality'. 'Disappointment' was determined as the most commonly defined code in the determined main theme and sub-themes. Conclusion: It was determined that the majority of infertile women base their sexual lives on reproductive functions, experience serious sexual health problems, feel worthless, and describe their sexual life as a great disappointment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OVERVIEW: The metaverse is widely expected to become the next generation of the Internet and to have a comparable business impact. Thus far, however, many companies have experienced significant challenges and disappointments with the metaverse. This article introduces a method for companies to create a metaverse strategy and to ask the right managerial questions to move beyond the hype and derive tangible value from metaverse technologies. We also propose three alternative pathways for implementing a metaverse strategy in practice, thereby helping managers respond effectively to metaverse-related strategic questions. PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS: To achieve success in the metaverse, companies need to determine their "why," figure out their "what," and decide their "how." By pinpointing their "why," "what," and "how," companies can devise an actionable metaverse strategy that will allow them to capitalize on the potential of this emerging technology to realize competitive gains—without falling prey to the hype. Three alternative pathways exist—mission-driven, experimentation-driven, and synergy-driven—that companies can explore to achieve business impact and success in the metaverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awaiting news of uncertain outcomes is distressing because the news might be disappointing. To prevent such disappointments, people often "brace for the worst," pessimistically lowering expectations before news arrives to decrease the possibility of surprising disappointment (a negative prediction error, or PE). Computational decision-making research commonly assumes that expectations do not drift within trials, yet it is unclear whether expectations pessimistically drift in real-world, high-stakes settings, what factors influence expectation drift, and whether it effectively buffers emotional responses to goal-relevant outcomes. Moreover, individuals learn from PEs to accurately anticipate future outcomes, but it is unknown whether expectation drift also impedes PE-based learning. In a sample of students awaiting exam grades (N = 625), we found that expectations often drift and tend to drift pessimistically. We demonstrate that bracing is preferentially modulated by uncertainty; it transiently buffers the initial emotional impact of negative PEs but impairs PE-based learning, counterintuitively sustaining uncertainty into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay looks at Akhtaruzzaman Elias' modernist novel Khwabnama as the apex of a narrative arc of left utopia within the ruins of the present, distributed over multiple short stories and one earlier novel. The ennui that suffused this body of work emanated from the author's itinerant affiliation with organized socialist politics, and the sense of disappointment that surrounded the evisceration of that politics within the Pakistan (1947–1970) and Bangladesh (1971–) period of this geography. I explore how Elias developed a distinct literary strategy of resuscitating hope by traveling back to anticolonial uprisings to narrate a time of Hindu-Muslim unity along class solidarity alignments. I look at Elias' peers, who also wrote from within a landscape of postcolonial disappointment. I then spend time with four of Elias' short stories that present a post-independence Bangladesh in which, bereft of external enemies, fratricidal tendencies turn populations against each other. From these short stories, Elias moved to his first novel, Chilekothar Sepai, where he looked at the 1969 Pakistan uprising as a class revolution derailed by bourgeois nationalism. Finally, I look at Khwabnama and think through how Elias wanted to travel far away from the traditional focus of the Bangladeshi historical novel—the 1971 liberation war—to find an earlier anticolonial period where a politics of class solidarity across religious lines could find hopeful purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractFully autonomous vehicles (FAVs) operated by AI voice agents create a unique multi-user environment without a traditional driver, allowing users to engage in diverse activities such as entertainment and rest. In addition to the convenience of vehicle control, these agents face the challenge of resolving conflicts arising from multiple simultaneous user commands. This study investigates whether AI voice agents can effectively manage these command conflicts and enhance the multi-user experience (MUX). The research was conducted in two phases: In the preliminary study, online focus group interviews (FGIs) were conducted with 10 participants to explore their perceptions of using AI voice agents in FAVs. Participants shared their experiences and watched a concept video to discuss their expectations of FAV agents. Based on the FGI results, explainable AI voice agents were designed to prevent user conflicts between user commands, focusing on user tendencies and conflict contexts. In the main study, multi-user interactions with these agents were evaluated through online experiments with 89 participants. Two specific experiments were conducted based on the sources of conflict identified in the preliminary study: the first focused on control authority and the second on speech overlap. Participants watched scenario videos and assessed five variables, including sense of agency, trust, problem-solving ability, disappointment, and safety. The findings suggest that explanations provided by AI voice agents can effectively mitigate conflicts and improve MUX in FAVs. However, the effectiveness of these explanations varied across different contexts, indicating the need for alternative approaches. This research provides valuable insights for designing MUXs that prevent multi-user conflicts and meet user expectations in FAV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal affective computing is an emerging new field, which has so far mainly focused on pain, while other emotional states remain uncharted territories, especially in horses. This study is the first to develop AI models to automatically recognize horse emotional states from facial expressions using data collected in a controlled experiment. We explore two types of pipelines: a deep learning one which takes as input video footage, and a machine learning one which takes as input EquiFACS annotations. The former outperforms the latter, with 76% accuracy in separating between four emotional states: baseline, positive anticipation, disappointment and frustration. Anticipation and frustration were difficult to separate, with only 61% accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1974, Iraqi-born Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Farmān (1927–1990) published his novel al-Makhāḍ (Labor Pains. Baghdad: Maktabat al-Taḥrīr, 1974). Farmān had subscribed to Communist ideas since his youth, a leaning for which he was also arrested, yet in this novel, he bluntly expresses his disappointment with the 1958 Iraqi revolution's consequences and his doubts about the concept of revolution itself. In this study, Farmān's novel will be placed within the broader historical and cultural context in which Leftist Arab intellectuals became critical of the Iraqi revolutions of 1958, 1963 and 1968 alike. A close reading of the novel, published six years after the Baʿth revolution of 1968 and the rise of Saddam Hussein to power, reveals admonitions on possible future turns of events. To wit, the concentration of power in the hands of the state and the regime, persecution of political rivals, favoring regime allies, economic disparities, as well as the discord between the noble goals of the revolution and its contradictions in the preservation of the post-revolutionary order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absence of a definitive cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) emphasizes the crucial need to explore new and improved treatment approaches for this fatal, progressive, and disabling neurodegenerative disorder. As at the end of 2023, five treatments – riluzole, edaravone, dextromethorphan hydrobromide + quinidine sulfate (DHQ), tofersen, and sodium phenylbutyrate-tauroursodeoxycholic acid (PB-TUDCA) – were FDA approved for the treatment of patients with ALS. Among them PB-TUDCA has been shown to impact DNA processing impairments, mitochondria dysfunction, endoplasmic reticulum stress, oxidative stress, and pathologic folded protein agglomeration defects, which have been associated with ALS pathophysiology. The Phase 2 CENTAUR trial demonstrated significant impact of PB-TUDCA on the ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised (ALSFRS-R) risk of death, hospitalization, and the need for tracheostomy or permanent assisted ventilation in patients with ALS based on post hoc analyses. More recently, contrasting with the CENTAUR trial results, results from the Phase 3 PHOENIX trial (NCT05021536) showed no change in ALSFRS-R total score at 48 weeks. Consequently, the sponsor company initiated the process with the US FDA and Health Canada to voluntarily withdraw the marketing authorizations for PB-TUDCA. In the present article, we review ALS pathophysiology, with a focus on PB-TUDCA's proposed mechanisms of action and recent clinical trial results and discuss the implications of conflicting trial data for ALS and other neurological disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the support of the Ukrainian PEN scholarship program, and implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation and the New Democracy Fund (Denmark) as part of the Rapid Response Fund. On the basis of real-life stories and the classics of world philosophy and literature, the author examines the different meanings and connotations that accompany the use of the words hope, disappointment, desire, expect, win, believe, and act in Ukraine today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cities, Communities & Territories / Cidades, Comunidades e Territórios is the property of Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, DINAMIA-CET and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background. The relevance of the work is due to insufficient knowledge of adolescents’ understanding disappointment, its causes and ways of its overcoming. Objective. The study had purpose to investigate into ideas about disappointment among the young people aged 17–25 years. Study Participants. The study involved 285 people (180 girls and 105 boys) aged 17–25 years. Methods. The study implemented content analysis of mini-essays on the topic: “My idea of disappointment” including answers to the following questions: “What is disappointment?”, “What feelings did you experience when disappointed?”, “The greatest disappointment in my life.” Results. The study allowed to analyze the concepts of disappointment among young people, to identify its different types and describe the specifics of experiencing disappointment in the selected age groups. All subjects understand disappointment as a manifestation of negative emotions in response to an expected result. The study has identified three types of disappointment: in oneself, in others, in activities. When describing feelings associated with disappointment, negative emotions predominated in the 17–20-year-old group. In the 21–25-year-old group, in addition to negative ones, there were also positive feelings as grounds for revising plans and their implementation. Conclusions. In the young people aged 17–25 experiencing disappointment, the negative emotions reinforce their negative self-affirmation and destroy their confidence in the truth of their feelings towards themselves and others. Only a small number of young people can see the possibility of positive changes in a situation of disappointment, which makes it difficult to correct behavior and attitudes towards others in the process of overcoming disappointment. The results obtained allow for introducing the concept of disappointment, which affects interpersonal relationships, into the social psychology. The proposed recommendations can be used by educators and psychologists practicing support to the people of different ages aimed at overcoming frustration of disappointments.

Environmental decision makers lament instances in which the lack of actionable science limits confident decision-making. Their reaction when the needed scientific information is of poor quality, uninformative, unintelligible, or altogether absent is often to criticize scientists, their work, or science in general. The considerations offered here encourage decision makers to explore alternative approaches to alleviate their disappointment. Ironically, many researchers lament the lack of support for the science they wish to deliver and accuse decision makers of failing to realize the value of the scientific studies they propose. Both communities would benefit by remembering that producing actionable science for a pending decision requires knowing the context for that decision beforehand. They may also look inward. Only then will they find answers to the question: What can I do within my own capacity to ensure that the necessary actionable science becomes available and facilitate its use to inform decisions? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bakker and Lelkes (2024) point at a critical gap in research on affective polarisation: the limited understanding of its affective components, mainly due to the reliance on a unidimensional operationalisation of affect in affective polarisation. They advocate for a broader approach to study affect, integrating explicit and implicit measures, and call on emotion specialists to address this gap. Acknowledging the complexity of affect in the ideological divide, we argue that the lack of a thorough examination of the distinct role of discrete emotions constitutes the primary "affective gap". Drawing from studies on the relationship between ideological groups and utilising a discrete emotions approach, we contest the prevailing assumption that hatred predominantly underlies affective polarisation. Instead, we propose that disappointment, better captures the intricate dynamics between ideological groups. We argue that such nuanced approach, regarding the affective component of affective polarisation enhances our understanding of the phenomenon and shed light on its implications for societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Political Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

AbstractJulia Watts Belser’s Loving Our Own Bones is a vital contribution to disability theology, biblical hermeneutics, and more. This response explores Watts Belser’s critiques of beauty and of the desire to “rescue” texts, pairing them with the book’s reflections on disappointment. It also questions the role of love and eros, directing attention to the Song of Songs as a possible resource for the larger project imagined by the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of an "intimate resistance" in the work of the Chilean poet Jorge Teillier (1935-1996) operates from the speaker's nostalgic unfolding in the face of modern uprooting within a ruinous environment. This entails articulating the paradox between the speaker's intimate everyday life experience and the sense of orphanhood caused by his current precarious existence, which encourages him to resignify the present and expand into the future. In this way, a pendular game of antagonisms arises in Tellier's poetics: life and death, happiness and disappointment, rootedness and uprooting; a vital tendency of the speaker to disintegrate, counteracted with the intimate resistance from the ruins of his memory where he persists in his alterity and finitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The final episode of the Anabasis dismays many readers: Xenophon takes a small group of associates to kidnap the household of the wealthy Persian, Asidates. Thereby he himself becomes wealthy. This paper examines several details of the account of that episode. The mature author gives us the unvarnished facts straightforwardly, through the uncritical perspective of the youthful agent. From these brute facts the reader may infer that the mature writer intends a negative judgement about the final episode. The mature Xenophon thus presents some self-criticism. That capacity for self-criticism may come from the influence of Socrates. There are reasons, however, to make a further judgement that Xenophon's admirable capacity for self-criticism was sadly limited. One cannot escape deep disappointment after reflecting on the final episode of the Anabasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Psychology & Sociology is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The government has consistently endeavored to enhance community welfare by improving public services, empowering communities, and fostering increased community participation. In this new service paradigm, the public is regarded as the service user, while the government assumes the role of the service provider. This study seeks to gain insights into the public’s perceptions of the licensing service process at the Office of One Stop Integrated Services and Investment in Ternate City. This research takes a qualitative approach, focusing on comprehending the socially constructed nature of reality. Specifically, it aims to address how social experiences are shaped and given meaning. This understanding is rooted in the belief that humans are symbolic beings who actively seek meaning in their lives. The findings of this study reveal that the public still expresses grievances and disappointments concerning the standard service procedures presented by service officers, particularly in terms of providing information on all types of services to the community. Furthermore, certain costs must be incurred by business operators due to incomplete submitted files, which result in further delays in processing. Additionally, the extended processing time (ranging from 7 to 30 days) for licensing services by officers can lead to additional costs borne by society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The online behavior of online users has taken on complex and diverse characteristics, and posting product reviews on e-commerce platforms is no exception. In fact, reviews contain rich and multi-dimensional discrete emotional information, and whether there is a relationship between the expression of these different discrete emotions and the time interval between product purchase and review posting as well as their related characteristics are the issues that this study needs to analyze and solve in depth. Methods: Based on the OCC model (named after three proposers) of psychological emotional cognitive evaluation theory as the basis for emotion classification, the study used the massive amounts of Chinese reviews of mobile phones on the Chinese e-commerce platform Jingdong Mall as the research object, applied supervised machine learning methods to classify discrete emotions, and constructed a large corpus containing satisfaction, disappointment, admiration, reproach, love, and hate; then the study delved into the distribution and behavioral dynamics characteristics of consumers' comments containing the different discrete emotions at different "purchasecomment" time intervals. Results: The results showed that the first peak of the distribution curves of the six discrete emotions at different "purchase-comment" time intervals occurs on the first day after purchase and then decreases gradually but at different rates. The three curves for satisfaction, love, and hate emotions also show a second peak on the eleventh day, which is more similar to the bimodal distribution, implying that the corresponding product reviews are more objective. In addition, the distribution of reviews containing the six discrete emotions at different "purchase-comment" time intervals follows a power-law distribution and has the temporal characteristics of human behavioral dynamics, that is, "strong paroxysms and weak memory". However, the reviews containing the admiration and reproach emotions were most intensively written by consumers after the purchase, indicating that the service provided by the seller, logistics, and e-commerce platform stimulates more consumers to give quick responses and detailed reviews. Conclusion: This study is not only of great significance for exploring the internal mechanisms of consumer discrete emotional expression but also provides important decision-making references for potential consumer purchasing decisions, product updates for developers, marketing strategy formulation for marketing teams, and service improvement for sellers, logistics companies, and e-commerce platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essential need for expert, fully trained electrochemists in the successful application of the subject is illustrated with several examples including the use of rotating electrodes and impedance spectroscopy where the use of the techniques in "black box" mode non-experts is likely to lead to disappointment or embarrassment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings of a study measuring perceptions of teacher autonomy of practitioners of English as a foreign language (EFL). This study also sought to identify areas in which Indonesian secondary schools need to improve to enable teachers to enjoy a greater degree of freedom while completing teaching-related activities. Additionally, it aimed to explore correlations between practitioners' perceptions of teacher autonomy and their gender, school location, school status and teaching experience. This was a mixed-methods study comprising a sequential explanatory design with two consecutive stages: quantitative and qualitative. The data were gathered using two instruments: a closed-ended questionnaire and a focus group. The sample consisted of 185 (74 male and 111 female) Indonesian secondary school EFL teachers, recruited using convenience sampling. The findings indicated that teachers' sense of autonomy in relation to seven specific areas of their work was relatively high. Specifically, they perceived themselves to have a considerable amount of autonomy with respect to teaching methodology, instructional materials, course content, assessment, and, more recently, lesson planning. However, they expressed disappointment at being excluded from the decision-making process regarding the school curriculum. The findings also revealed that teachers expected more school support in relation to teaching facilities and professional development. The article concludes by considering several key implications for school management teams regarding the need to foster teacher autonomy among English language practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opera Australia recently unveiled its second new production of Wagner's tetralogy in a decade, but it was met with disappointment. The production, presented in Brisbane, faced challenges due to the venue's dead acoustic and small pit, which limited the size of the orchestra. While the Australian singers were praised, the use of digital technology and the direction of the production were criticized. Overall, the production was deemed of lower quality and unlikely to be revived. [Extracted from the article]

This study presents a very important and sensitive part of the life and activity of the Romanian national hero Avram Iancu, after the end of the Revolution of 1848-1849. Given their achievements during the revolutionary battles, he and his comrades-in-arms should have been decorated and rewarded accordingly. Despite the testimonies and recommendations of important personalities of his time, Avram Iancu did not receive the recognition and the distinctions due from the Emperor Franz Joseph I. Moreover, he and his comrades-in-arms were humiliated, falling victim to the intrigues of the Transylvanian Saxon elites in the high political spheres of Vienna. This analysis shows how the heroes of the Romanian nation from Transylvania of the first half of the 19th century, caught between dynastic loyalty, the intrigues of the Transylvanian Saxons and the nationalism of the "master people" of Austria, suffered disappointments and thus ended a difficult chapter of their modern history. It was a time of struggle for political and national rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disappointment is common in many organizations. Yet little is known about how individuals' talk about their workplace disappointment shapes their identification with organizations. We conducted an analysis of 104 academics in a prestigious British university to make two contributions to our understanding of the discursive constitution of organizational identification (OID). First, we show how individuals used different types of disappointment-talk to narrate and respond to identification dilemmas in distinct ways. Our findings extend existing research by showing that discourses of emotion do not simply delimit agency but also enable individuals to resist and reject organizational discourses that attempt to anchor them to specific identity positions. Second, we identify a novel way in which individuals can configure the multiple discourses that can be in tension and generate disappointment – unravelling. Here, individuals draw upon one among the multiple discourses in conflict (in our case, prestige) to 'unravel' the knotting between the various discourses that constituted their OID dilemmas. We also consider the implications of our study for academic labour in universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first phase, the eruption of the Internet was embraced by academics who saw it as a way of involving young people in politics who had suffered from disaffection and rejection. They emphasized its emancipatory, horizontal, and participatory qualities. Decades later, a wave of disenchantment, apathy, and rejection of platforms has swept through the academy. The previous generation of technological determinists, who welcomed it with open arms, left the arena to their counterparts: the ones that claimed that we had no chance of participation and perpetuated industrial age exploitation. In this article, we will present the two opposite visions, but first, we will briefly review the Internet's beginnings, its motivations, and its technical characteristics in order to better understand the two antagonistic positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article titled "The Oporto-Vigo Railway. An approach to its landscapes" analyzes the relationship between the railway and the landscape, highlighting the importance of conventional railways in the observation and composition of the landscape. The characteristics that make the landscape experience attractive in tourist trains are mentioned, as well as the integration of conventional railway lines into the landscape. On the other hand, it is mentioned that the routes of high-speed railways have broken this relationship, generating disappointment among travelers due to the lack of views and the high speed of travel. The article emphasizes the need for initiatives and measures to strengthen the historical relationship between the railway and the landscape. In addition, a book titled "The Oporto-Vigo Railway. An approach to its landscapes" is presented, which analyzes in detail the landscapes of the Oporto-Vigo line, with the aim of enhancing the relationship between the railway and the landscape. [Extracted from the article]

Ten years after the revolutionary upheaval, the Arab Spring in Egypt has come to signify a betrayed promise of liberation, repudiating the feasibility of resistance against oppression. Against the fatalist narratives of the uprising, I examine the politically transformative potential of disappointment. I draw on Ernst Bloch's notion of educated hope and recent interventions in utopian studies to interrogate how resisters can reconfigure their horizon of hope in response to disappointment. I argue that the resisters' grappling with their disappointment can redirect their hope toward a persistent striving for greater freedom and justice that is based on a concrete negotiation of the possibilities for action and willing to bear the risk of failure. I develop the political relevance of disappointed hope through a selected firsthand account of the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed , written by a prominent Egyptian activist and writer Ahdaf Soueif. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the meteoric rise and downfall of the 16+1 platform, created by China in 2012 for its "win-win" cooperation with sixteen Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The format has never managed to become as globally well known as China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which it was meant to serve as an implementation tool in Europe from 2013 on. The 16+1 platform's decade-long under-performance in terms of investments and trade has created deep disappointment among its European participants, leading to their growing criticism and disengagement. The paper analyzes these developments, the modest accomplishments of the format as perceived from the CEE standpoint, exemplified with relevant case studies of some of its most notorious projects, trying to discern winners from losers and spot the potentially hidden interests that China might actually have had when initiating the platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to explore the role of partners’ negative engaging and disengaging emotions in dealing with the frustration of autonomy and relatedness needs during conflict. In an observational study, partners from 141 heterosexual couples participated in a conflict interaction task followed by a video-mediated recall procedure during which they reported their level of relational need frustration and their emotions experienced at different moments during the interaction. Results showed that in partners, more autonomy frustration, experienced at the beginning of the conflict, was accompanied by more concurrent negative disengaging emotions (anger, irritation), whereas more relatedness frustration was accompanied by more negative engaging emotions (hurt, sadness, disappointment). Additionally, the concurrent association between partners’ relatedness frustration and their experience of negative engaging emotions was negatively moderated by their own relatedness relationship beliefs (as assessed by background questionnaires), indicating that for individuals who considered relatedness to be less important, relatedness frustration and negative engaging emotions were more strongly linked than for people with high relatedness beliefs. Finally, negative engaging emotions – assessed at the beginning of the conflict – were associated with more relatedness frustration at a subsequent time point in the interaction in men, but not in women. This study contributes to our understanding of how partners’ negative emotions and the frustration of important relational needs are intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the late 1940s and the early 1970s, the majority of teenage girls in Britain attended secondary modern schools. Yet, histories of the meaning and experience of postwar education continue to neglect this constituent of postwar women, favouring grammar-school leavers. This article draws upon a set of fifty-eight newly mined life histories from two postwar birth cohort studies to recapture the perspectives of ordinary women who attended secondary modern schools in England, Wales, and Scotland between c.1957 and c.1963. The longitudinal sources show that these women developed their attitudes to education gradually, across their lifecourses. Hairdressing, which stood for a desire for clean, creative, and autonomous paid work that could be balanced with domesticity, is identified as a reoccurring theme in the testimonies of secondary modern women. The article diagnoses secondary modern women with the hairdresser blues, a formulation that encapsulates their collective expectations, disappointments, and regrets born out of their closely interlinked experiences of schooling and paid work across the 1960s and early 1970s. These women's educational attitudes were defined by the cumulative realization that a secondary modern education might not even be able to make you into a hairdresser. The article ultimately suggests that it was more often the hairdresser blues rather than 'missing out' on the prestigious grammar school that politicized secondary modern schools for the ordinary women who attended them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research takes the first step in exploring how the emotions of choice recipients influence the riskiness of decisions made for them by others. In particular, we focus on the role of sadness—an emotion that has been shown to prompt risk‐seeking in choices for self. Across five studies, in monetary and social decisions, participants prefer safer options for sad, relative to neutral‐affect others, even when the expected value of the safer option is significantly lower than that of the riskier option. The effect is driven by a desire to protect sad others from further loss or disappointment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on some of the more hidden and obscure aspects of workplace interactions which profoundly affect an executive's chances of success. The importance of (i) an executive's position within the organization's hierarchy, (ii) the embedded power structure, (iii) its political infrastructure, and (iv) the psychological characteristics of the key players in determining their relative success or failure is highlighted. Eight 'Reasons to be Careful'--each of which can help facilitate executive success and guard against failure and career disappointment--are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on congressional decision-making has largely ignored the influence of the minority party in the legislative process. This follows from the widely held belief that the majority party dominates the agenda-setting process. Though the minority party rarely achieves major policy success in Congress, we argue that the minority has significantly more influence over the legislative agenda than is commonly believed. We posit that, under some conditions, the minority has enough bargaining leverage to get floor votes on their proposals, in the form of both amendments and bills. We test our theoretical expectations with a novel design utilizing whip count data from the House and show that when a whip count on a bill occurs, the likelihood of a minority amendment disappointment and a majority amendment roll increases, respectively. This suggests that the more leverage the minority party has, the more we see their legislative proposals on the floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joan of Arc has inspired many works of art. The iconographical discourse of this artistic tradition is twofold: she is portrayed either as the homeland's saviour or as a religious virgin. The cinematic adaptations by Carl Th. Dreyer and Robert Bresson – respectively La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Dreyer, 1928) and Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (Bresson, 1962) – demonstrate, however, that the latter iconographical image is again twofold. Preferring an inexpressive acting style to emotional expression and fragmented bodily representation to bodily wholeness, Bresson portrays Joan as a saint who excels in faith and quietude. As in the literary tradition of the saint's vita, Joan transcends the now, the physical and the emotional. In La Passion, Dreyer's continuous emphasis on suffering and death contributes to the portrait of Joan as a martyr. Along with overt symbolic images, the emotional and facial expressiveness of lead actress Falconetti reflects the intense agony of Christ, who, throughout much of human history, has served as the ultimate example for martyrs themselves and artists, including authors working within the genre of the martyr's passio. To both Dreyer and Bresson, the figure of Joan serves as a bridge, connecting disappointment with the present to passion for the historical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Epstein and Zin's recursive utility function, this paper integrates generalized disappointment aversion preferences to derive an intertemporal equilibrium asset pricing model (ICAPM). We show that in addition to discount-rate news, cash-flow news, and news about future risk, four factors related to disappointment are priced. These four factors are a downstate factor, discount-rate downside news, cash-flow downside news, and downside news about future risk. We find that our seven-factor model can explain the cross-section of expected returns across portfolios sorted by size, book-to-market, investment, operating profitability, and momentum. Both the seven-beta ICAPM and the restricted seven-beta ICAPM suggest that disappointment-averse investors are more sensitive to cash-flow news and cash-flow downside news than other news terms and therefore demand higher premiums. Our results show that the seven-beta ICAPM has better performance for most portfolios and provides empirical support for investors' asymmetric preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyamory means having a sexual and/or intimate relationship with more than one person at a time. In this study, we use in-depth interviews with 22 persons in Sweden who have experience of polyamorous or non-monogamous relationships to explore how polyamory can include imagining utopian relationships and spaces. Thematic analysis was done which indicated narratives of politically invested attempts to create communal living or societal change that resists capitalist and heteronormative nuclear-family arrangements as well as stories of everyday events that do not explicitly involve political ambitions. The range of utopian dreams and practices of the non-monogamous participants in our study, we argue, are examples of what Muñoz calls concrete utopias, filled with joy and laden with disappointment in the face of potentiality and reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Reading Lacan's Écrits," which provides in-depth analysis of Lacan's work. While not suitable for beginners, the book offers valuable insights for serious students of Lacan. The article also discusses the film "Adieu Lacan," which portrays a fictionalized version of Lacan's treatment techniques. The film explores themes of immigration, gender disappointment, and the power of the unconscious. The text delves into session length as a technique in psychoanalysis, defense analysis, and the role of the analyst in helping patients express their unconscious desires. It also highlights the importance of adapting analytic concepts to diverse identities. [Extracted from the article]

From the publication of À Rebours, Huysmans' books feature a solitary protagonist, dreaming of a situation outside society, time and space, and even the body and sex. To this desire corresponds the increasing modification of the novel formula: a reflection of life in anomaly, the novel is transformed, to become a reverse novel, sick, deformed, bizarre. The refusal of regularity hides another refusal, that of conforming to a reality that does not correspond to the depth of personal experience. The work of Huysmans, especially in its postnaturalist part, brings a constant questioning of the norm under its various aspects, and constitutes an attempt to create a universe made to measure, necessarily a universe in anomaly. The journey that leads, in the field of novel, from À Rebours to L'Oblat, allows us to trace the stages of this evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]