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Drawing on ethnographic data from the 2019 SyrianFoodFutures and 2020 From the FIELD projects, this article provides insights into the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugee labour in agriculture in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. In spring 2020, movement restrictions and supply chain disruptions caused displaced Syrian farmworkers to lose their jobs and experience increased food insecurity. We situate our findings in the context of host countries’ use of legal ambiguity for governing refugees, Middle Eastern agriculture’s reliance on migrant labour, and the region’s longstanding food insecurity. We conclude that formalising refugee labour is not enough to address exploitation.

Background Coronary vasospasm is a rare cause of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and can be precipitated by numerous inciting factors including endogenous catecholamines. Differentiating coronary vasospasm from an acute atherothrombotic event is diagnostically challenging and requires a careful clinical history combined with electrocardiographic and angiographic abnormalities to make the diagnosis and guide therapy. Case Summary We report a case of cardiogenic shock secondary to cardiac tamponade leading to an endogenous catecholamine surge resulting in profound arterial vasospasm and STEMI. The patient presented with chest pain and inferior ST segment elevations prompting emergent coronary angiography, demonstrating subtotal occlusion of the right coronary artery, severe proximal left anterior descending coronary artery stenosis, and diffusely stenosed aortoiliac vessels. Emergent transthoracic echocardiogram revealed a large pericardial effusion and hemodynamics consistent with cardiac tamponade. Pericardiocentesis resulted in dramatic hemodynamic improvement with immediate normalization of ST segments. Repeat coronary angiography performed one day later showed no angiographically significant coronary or peripheral arterial stenosis. Discussion This is the first reported case of simultaneous coronary and peripheral arterial vasospasm presenting as inferior STEMI caused by endogenous catecholamines from cardiac tamponade. Several clues suggest coronary vasospasm including the discordant electrocardiography (ECG) and coronary angiographic findings as well as diffusely stenosed aortoiliac vessels. Diffuse vasospasm was confirmed when repeat angiography performed after pericardiocentesis demonstrated angiographic resolution of coronary and peripheral arterial stenosis. Though rare, circulating endogenous catecholamines resulting in diffuse coronary vasospasm may present as STEMI and should be considered based on the clinical history, ECG findings, and coronary angiography.

Venous congestion is an under-recognized contributor to mortality in critically ill patients. Unfortunately, venous congestion is difficult to measure, and right heart catheterization (RHC) remains the gold standard. Recently, a novel “Venous Excess Ultrasound (VExUS)” score was developed to noninvasively quantify venous congestion using inferior vena cava (IVC) diameter and doppler flow through the hepatic, portal, and renal veins. A preliminary retrospective study of post-cardiac surgery patients showed promising results, including a high positive-likelihood ratio of high VExUS grade for acute kidney injury. However, further validation studies have not been reported in broader patient populations, and validity of VExUS as compared to other measures of venous congestion such as IVC diameter is unknown. To address this gap, the authors prospectively validated the VExUS against right atrial pressure (RAP), with comparison to inferior vena cava (IVC) diameter. Patients undergoing RHC at the Denver Health Medical Center underwent VExUS examination before their procedure. VExUS grades were assigned before RHC, blinding ultrasonographers to RHC outcomes. After controlling for age, sex, and common comorbidities, there was a significant positive linear association between RAP and VExUS grade (p 2 = .68). VExUS had a favorable AUC for prediction of a RAP ≥ 12 mmHg (0.99, 95% CI 0.96-1) compared to IVC diameter (0.79, 95% CI 0.65–0.92). These results suggest a strong physiologic correlation between VExUS and RAP in a diverse patient population, and support future studies of VExUS as a tool to assess venous congestion and guide management in a variety of critical illnesses.

Distinguishing high-performing employees imposes choices on managers: Is recognition most effectively delivered publicly or privately? If delivered publicly, what setting is best? This paper broadens the accounting literature on the implications of these decisions. Via experiment, I examine how the social bond between recognized employees and those observing the recognition influences the effect of recognition visibility on employee behavior. I find that with weak social bonds, public recognition (versus private) does not result in more beneficial employee behavior. However, when social bonds are strong, employees provide greater pre-recognition effort and respond more positively to public recognition than to private recognition. Overall, my study supports the extensive use of public recognition in practice and helps clarify the collective results from prior accounting studies. My findings also have implications for implementing recognition programs—suggesting managers should consider employee relationships when deciding how and where to recognize their employees.

In this article, I explore what I call the persecutory trope – which underscores the alterity of the phantom and its relentless haunting and spectral oppression of the protagonists – in recent American ghost films, connecting it to the ethical thought of the continental philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Films like The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002), The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2004), It Follows (Robert Mitchell, 2014), and Sinister (Scott Derrickson, 2012) depict terrifying spectral antagonists whose relentless persecution of the protagonists often defies comprehension and narrative closure. I suggest that these films comprise a specific supernatural subgenre due to the particular way in which their specters haunt the victims. The relentlessness of the spectral assailant, and the foreclosure of actions by which the specter is either expelled from or reintegrated into symbolic understanding of its victim, can be construed in terms of the ethical relationship between the other and the self in the work of Levinas and Derrida. Their focus on the moral agent's responsibility to an other, an obligation that the agent does not undertake voluntarily, entails the spectralization of ethical responsibility insofar as it does not rest on solid, evidential grounds. This article shows how the spectralization of the ethical resonates in recent American ghost films through the disruptive effects of the specter's haunting and responsive mourning enacted by protagonists.

In the outpatient setting, ambulatory electrocardiography is the most frequently used diagnostic modality for the evaluation of patients in whom cardiac arrhythmias or conduction abnormalities are suspected. Proper selection of the device type and monitoring duration is critical for optimizing diagnostic yield and cost-effective resource utilization. However, despite guidance from major professional societies, the lack of systematic guidance for proper test selection in many institutions results in the need for repeat testing, which leads to not only increased resource utilization and cost of care, but also suboptimal patient care. To address this unmet need at our own institution, we formed a multidisciplinary panel to develop a concise, yet comprehensive algorithm, incorporating the most common indications for ambulatory electrocardiography, to efficiently guide clinicians to the most appropriate test option for a given clinical scenario, with the goal of maximizing diagnostic yield and optimizing resource utilization. The algorithm was designed as a single-page, color-coded flowchart to be utilized both as a rapid reference guide in printed form, and a decision support tool embedded within the electronic medical records system at the point of order entry. We believe that systematic adoption of this algorithm will optimize diagnostic efficiency, resource utilization, and importantly, patient care and satisfaction.

Many volatile chemicals inhaled for a recreational high have a chemical structure similar to chloroform and may lead to Ikr blockade and subsequent torsades de pointes. This is one potential mechanism of action for huffing‐associated sudden death.

Introduction: Transseptal puncture (TSP) is an essential step in percutaneous structural heart interventions, such as the MitraClip® procedure. Radiation exposure is a hazard for Interventional Cardiologists, Echocardiographers, and patients. Advancements in shielding and radiation equipment have reduced this exposure, but further reduction is desired. EchoNav® (Philips) fuses fluoroscopy and echocardiography resulting in a single multimodal image display. Prior studies demonstrated reduced time to TSP with use of EchoNav® but failed to show significant reduction in radiation. We hypothesized that increased experience using EchoNav® would further decrease TSP time and radiation dose. Methods: Single center, retrospective analysis evaluated 202 patients undergoing MitraClip® procedure pre and post-EchoNav® from 6/2010 to 12/2019: 8 pre and 194 post. We measured time to TSP and radiation exposure by Air Kerma and dose area product (DAP). For the post-EchoNav® cases, we evaluated these variables by 2-year time periods to examine change over time. Results: Comparing pre and post-EchoNav ® procedures, time to TSP was non-significantly reduced overall (40.00±14.95 to 33.63±15.92, p=0.23). However, post-EchoNav ® had a decreasing trend (48.00±28.39, 43.47±15.86, 28.45±11.94, 27.55±10.64; R 2 =0.89, p =0.009) that was significantly less than pre-EchoNav ® by the third time period (40.00±14.95 vs 28.45±11.94, p=0.05) and remained less in the fourth (40.00±14.95 vs 27.55±10.64, p=0.03). Radiation was reduced post-EchoNav ® by both DAP (264.52±150.03 to 109.00±97.68) (p=0.02) and Air Kerma (1472.92±883.50 to 582.49±485.28) (p=0.05). Significant radiation reduction occurred by the third time period for Air Kerma (1472.92±883.50 vs 494.12±413,79, p=0.03) and second time period for DAP (264.52±150.03 to 127.51±110.35, p=0.03). Conclusion: These results suggest that use of EchoNav® has a learning curve, but ultimately reduces time to TSP and radiation.

BACKGROUND The effects of edge-to-edge percutaneous mitral valve repair on the shape and size of the mitral annulus and its relation to mitral regurgitation (MR) have not been well characterized. We evaluated acute changes in mitral annular shape and dimensions, and their effect on MR severity, in patients with functional and degenerative MR following MitraClip® . METHODS Patients that underwent MitraClip® between January 2013 and May 2016 at our institution were retrospectively reviewed. EXCLUSIONS inadequate images, prior mitral valve repair, and rapid atrial fibrillation. Intra-procedure TEE 3D images acquired prior to and after implantation of MitraClip® were analyzed using software to model the mitral valve apparatus. RESULTS Of seventy-eight patients that underwent MitraClip® procedure, 60 were eligible. Mean age was 78.3 ± 11 years. Severe MR (4+) was present in 37 patients, moderately/severe MR (3+) in 23. All patients achieved MR reduction to ≤2. 3D annular circumference, bicommissural diameter, and anteroposterior diameter had a significant size reduction after MitraClip® . None of the mitral annular measures had significantly different mean change between the large and small MR change groups at the 0.05 significance level. CONCLUSIONS In patients with functional or degenerative MR, the MitraClip® significantly affect mitral annular dimensions; however, these changes do not correlate with the immediate MR reduction.

This article discusses a marine research project which prioritised mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems) to generate common management approaches and responses for the taonga (culturally impor...

Recently, Garcia et al. ([1][1]) and Rodriguez-Leor et al. ([2][2]) demonstrated a 38% to 40% reduction in presentations for acute cardiac catheterization laboratory activations across a consortium of high-volume primary percutaneous intervention centers correlating with the implementation of

This report provides contingency tables (crosstab) analysis of security class actions (SCAs) and flags from Corporate Watchdog Reports. Watchdog Research assigns red and yellow flags to disclosures made by publicly traded firms according to their proprietary classification system. We find the following flags to be leading indicators of security class actions: red flags for financial revisions and CFO changes; and yellow flags for the Beneish M-Score, cybersecurity, and non-audit fees. We also find that a security class action in one year increases the probability of another security class action in the following year, i.e. security class actions are serially correlated over time. Additionally, we find that several flags are correlated with security class actions. The presence of a correlated flag increases the probability that a security class action will occur in the same calendar year it was awarded. The analysis is based on a panel data set of NYSE and NASDAQ companies from 2014 to 2018.

Objectives:In 2010, South Africa (SA) hosted the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup (soccer). Emergency Medical Services (EMS) used the SA mass gathering medicine (MGM) resource model to predict resource allocation. This study analyzed data from the World Cup and compared them with the resource allocation predicted by the SA mass gathering model.Methods:Prospectively, data were collected from patient contacts at 9 venues across the Western Cape province of South Africa. Required resources were based on the number of patients seeking basic life support (BLS), intermediate life support (ILS), and advanced life support (ALS). Overall patient presentation rates (PPRs) and transport to hospital rates (TTHRs) were also calculated.Results:BLS services were required for 78.4% (n = 1279) of patients and were consistently overestimated using the SA mass gathering model. ILS services were required for 14.0% (n = 228), and ALS services were required for 3.1% (n = 51) of patients. Both ILS and ALS services, and TTHR were underestimated at smaller venues.Conclusions:The MGM predictive model overestimated BLS requirements and inconsistently predicted ILS and ALS requirements. MGM resource models, which are heavily based on predicted attendance levels, have inherent limitations, which may be improved by using research-based outcomes.

We examine a simple game in which males and females have different preferences over sex and children, and gender-biased asymmetric strategies. We attempt to characterize the fundamental tradeoffs in a static game of complete information. We find that plausible differences in preferences can account for observed time-trends in the so-called happiness gender gap, following the introduction of a single technology which may prevent conception and yields no dis-utility to men. The model suggests that men may have benefitted more than women from the introduction of the Pill, and raises the question of whether alternative forms of family planning might better equalize the relative positions of men and women in sexual partnerships. These findings have particular relevance for feminist critiques of the sexual revolution.

This paper is an exploration of the theoretical properties of the Becker fertility model. I demonstrate that the comparative statics of the Becker fertility model with a general budget constraint and its corresponding expenditure model can be expressed in terms of the ordinary consumer expenditure function with a change of variable. When there are no fixed-costs of quality per child, the Becker fertility model is equivalent to the ordinary consumer model with restrictions on the form of the utility function. Solutions to the Becker fertility model are provided with the Cobb-Douglas, CES, and AIDS specifications under this assumption, Becker’s hypothesis that demand for quality per child increases with income is not valid under any Cobb-Douglas or CES specification, but can be tested with a valid estimation of the AIDS model. I also evaluate the role of fixed-costs of quality per child in Becker’s model and show that they introduce a third term into the Slutsky matrix, i.e. in addition to ordinary substitution and income effects, but that these effects are small when the average fixed costs of quality per child is small relative to the marginal cost of quality per child. When the Becker model is expressed in terms of children, quality, and other goods, children must be a substitute for either their quality or for other goods and either quality or other goods must be a luxury good.

There are two important fertility-related puzzles for economists to address: first, the so-called demographic-economic paradox — the tendency of fertility to fall with rising income despite the fact that children should be normal good; and second, the paradox of rising non-marital fertility during an era of general fertility decline and contraceptive improvements. There is no general economic theory of fertility which can reconcile both puzzles while maintaining the assumption that children are normal goods. We attempt to do so here: we present a new model of sex and fertility with exogenous contraceptive technology. Households choose sex, children, and consumption of other goods to maximize utility subject to budget and fertility constraints. After evaluating the role of contraceptive shocks in the simple model, we extend the model to include Becker's quality of children variable in a general model of fertility. We demonstrate that an increase in contraceptive efficacy generally leads to increased sexual activity but may have a positive or negative effect on fertility, depending on the level of household sexual activity. The positive shocks to contraceptive efficacy of the Pill-era may therefore explain both the decrease in overall fertility and the increase in non-marital fertility. These results provide a firm theoretical basis for established empirical results on the power of the Pill.

We present the proper definition of social justice in light of classical philosophy and Scholastic theology, the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. Social justice has as its direct object the common good, and social justice is the virtue by which man habitually fulfills his obligations for the common good. The concept of social justice is a diminishment of the Scholastic concept of legal justice, which encompasses the whole of virtue and which is synonymous with righteousness. The common good is the love that exists among the members of the community. The common good is brought about by the righteousness of its members, or, equivalently, the practice of the virtues, preeminently charity. The traditional meanings of these concepts are contrasted the concepts of social justice and the common good as they are understood in liberation theology, which are incompatible with the teaching of the Church.

I summarize the key points of the scholastic theory of usury following The Scholastic Analysis of Usury by John T. Noonan. Usury is the sin of taking interest on a loan without a just title. According to Scholastic moral theology, interest on loans may be justified by the extrinsic titles to damnum emergens and lucrum cessans, i.e. for losses incurred or for profits lost. Implications of this teaching are discussed with regard to other contracts, such as partnerships, the census contract, bills of exchange and “dry exchange,” insurance contracts, and the so-called triple contract. Also discussed are the changes in the practices of confessors that occurred between 1822 and 1836.

We present a model of household decisions regarding sex, fertility, marriage, and consumption. Households choose marital status based on the expected utility of marriage, and then sex, children, and consumption of other goods to maximize utility subject to a budget and a fertility constraint. An increase in contraceptive efficacy generally leads to increased sexual activity but has ambiguous effects on fertility. Also, increases in contraceptive efficacy lead to lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates. The predictions correspond to the features of the Second Demographic Transition, including declining overall fertility rates, increasing non-marital fertility, and the decline in marriage.

In the Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, Stevenson and Wolfers (2007) document a new “gender gap” between the sexes, in which women today generally report lower subjective well-being relative to men. Motivated by recent work on gender-specific preferences, this paper considers whether changes in contraceptive technology, and the Pill especially, may have played some role in the declining relative (self-reported) happiness of women. We examine a simple model in which men and women have different preferences over sex and children. We find that plausible differences in male-female preference structures can yield the observed reversal in relative happiness following the introduction of a single technology which may prevent conception but yields no disutility to men. We attempt to characterize the fundamental tradeoffs in a static game of complete information, and make some extensions to repeated games. We find that preference structures substantially change the way in which the Pill may affect bargaining power and outcomes. The model suggests that men may have benefited more than women from the Pill in particular, and raises the question of whether other forms of family planning might better equalize the relative positions of men and women in partnerships. These results have particular relevance for feminist critiques of the sexual revolution.

I present an overview of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on usury. In 1515, the Fifth Lateran Council defined “the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk.” I argue that the economic conditions of the Middle Ages could not have justified any interest, but structural changes to the economy, including the abolition of slavery, inflation, and the emergence of markets for investment, justify interest on the basis of default risk, the costs of inflation, and opportunity costs.

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Microprocessors and microcontrollers are now widely used in automobiles. Microprocessor systems contain sources of interrupt and interrupt service routines, which are software components executed in response to the assertion of an interrupt in hardware. A major problem in designing the software of microprocessor systems is the analytical treatment of interrupt latency. Because multiple interrupt service routines are executed on the same CPU, they compete for the CPU and interfere with each other's latency requirements. Here, interrupt latency is defined as the delay between the assertion of the interrupt in hardware and the start of execution of the associated interrupt service routine. It is estimated that 80% of intermittent bugs in small microprocessor software loads are due to improper treatment of interrupts. Until this work, there is no analytic method for analyzing a particular system to determine if it may violate interrupt latency requirements. There is also no reliable empirical method for ruling out the possibility of interrupt latency violations in a particular system, as they may occur under only very specific conditions. We use a newly developed hybrid system approach to solve this interrupt latency compatibility analysis problem. We have developed an efficient algorithm to determine if interrupt latency violations may occur in a particular system. A software tool that implements the algorithm is also being developed. With such software, we can easily check if interrupt latency constraints may be violated under any circumstances. If so, such software may also indicate how to modify the interrupts and interrupt service routines to avoid such violations. INTRODUCTION Microprocessor systems contain interrupt sources (ISs), which can request service from the processor (assert an interrupt), and must always have a software response (the execution of the corresponding software interrupt service routine, or ISR) starting within an interval of time (the maximum allowable interrupt latency, or AIL) after the assertion of the hardware interrupt. Because a processor may execute only one stream of instructions at a time, the execution of one ISR may delay the execution of another ISR until the first has completed. Hence, ISs and their associated ISRs interfere with each other’s interrupt latency requirements and may not be combined arbitrarily in the same microprocessor system without the possibility of the AIL being violated for some or all ISs. As a necessary condition to guarantee that a microprocessor system will always behave as intended, each IS must always be serviced by its corresponding ISR within the AIL. Verifying that the interrupt latency requirement is always satisfied for every IS is the interrupt latency compatibility problem that we address in this paper. The importance of the interrupt latency compatibility problem in microprocessor system design cannot be overstated. A system accidentally constructed so that interrupt latency incompatibilities exist has a high probability of exhibiting serious behavioral defects which are intermittent, because the conditions required to

To the Editor. —It is the year 1993 not 1983. Unfortunately, many physicians still do not realize that Lyme disease becomes chronic, if not treated early and aggressively. Steere et al 1 assert that the patients in the study did not have Lyme disease because these patients were still ill after 30 days of treatment. If these physicians used polymerase chain reaction or immune capture testing to eliminate the diagnosis of Lyme disease, it would have made their study credible; however, they had no objective data to give their claim merit. There is no evidence to prove that Borrelia burgdorferi can be eradicated in vivo in 30 days. Therefore, considering the fact that most chronically ill Lyme disease patients report continued improvement when antibiotic treatment is extended well beyond 30 days, Steere and his fellow researchers would have done a much greater service had they conducted a study on the

Two differing examples of primary parenchymal nodular amyloid of the lung are reported. Both cases were proved by biopsy of the lung lesion as well as extensive evaluation for evidence of generalized amyloidosis. Review of the literature reveals 35 previously reported cases which fit the same description. Amyloidosis is a benign condition, usually causing no symptoms, requiring no treatment, but generally requiring biopsy for diagnosis. Pathological and roentgenologic characteristics are reviewed, and studies to establish its primary and localized nature are recommended. The etiology is not clear. The differential diagnosis includes a variety of metastatic neoplasms, granulomatous diseases, metastatic lung abscesses, multiple pulmonary hamartomas, bronchopneumonia, and infections.

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for specific antibodies in patients with strongyloidiasis was developed using antigens extracted from the third-stage larvae of Strongyloides stercoralis and Strongyloides ratti. Sera from two groups of patients with strongyloidiasis proven by parasitologic methods, including one group of 29 coded positive sera, and from presumed normal subjects as controls were tested. Sera with optical density values greater than two standard deviations above the mean optical density value for the sera from control subjects were considered to be positive. Using this criterion 82%-84% of 51 positive patients had antibodies to S. stercoralis or S. ratti antigens. Immunosuppression and other factors that might influence antibody responses were associated with some patients who were negative for antibodies to Strongyloides. Antigen from an intestinal nematode of rats, Nippostrongylus brasiliensis, was also evaluated and found to be unsuitable for serodiagnosis of strongyloidiasis because of frequent false-positive as well as false-negative results.

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