Minorities in the Post-Soviet Space Thirty Years After the Dissolution of the USSR

When the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the Russian Federation and the newly independent republics of the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia engaged in redefining their national identity in a challenging regional and global context. The stances and policies towards the minorities living in these countries became part of the striving towards national independence and identity formation. Despite vastly different post-Soviet nation-building trajectories, the development and implementation of state policies towards minorities had similar relevance and importance across the region. Thirty years after the end of the USSR what is the situation of minorities and minority issues in the countries that emerged from that multi-ethnic state? How have the former republics – including Russia dealt with their minorities and minority affairs? To what protection and rights are minority communities entitled to? Studies of the dissolution of the USSR and of nation-building in the independent post-Soviet states have flourished over the past decades. However, despite the relevance of the theme, there is a dearth of specialist publications which address the many issues related to minority communities in the post-Soviet space. This volume attempts to fill this gap by providing a collection of essays covering some of the most relevant aspects of the contemporary status and situation of minorities in the area

Time Trends in the Incidence and Treatment of Extra-Abdominal and Abdominal Aggressive Fibromatosis: A Population-Based Study

BACKGROUND: Aggressive fibromatosis (AF) is a locally infiltrating soft-tissue tumor. In a population-based study in the Netherlands, we evaluated time trends for the incidence and treatment of AF. METHODS: In PALGA: Dutch Pathology Registry, all patients diagnosed between 1993 and 2013 as having extra-abdominal or abdominal wall aggressive fibromatosis were identified and available pathology data of the patients were evaluated. Epidemiological and treatment-related factors were analyzed with χ(2)and regression analysis. RESULTS: During the study period, 1134 patients were identified. The incidence increased from 2.10 to 5.36 per million people per year. Median age at the time of diagnosis increased annually by B 0.285 (P = 0.001). Female gender prevailed and increased over time [annual odds ratio (OR) 1.022; P = 0.058]. All anatomic localizations, but in particular truncal tumors, became more frequent. During the study period diagnostic histological biopsies were performed more often (annual OR 1.096; P < 0.001). The proportion of patients who underwent surgical treatment decreased (annual OR 0.928; P < 0.001). When resection was preceded by biopsy, 49.8 % of the patients had R0-resection versus 30.7 % in patients without biopsy (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: In this population-based study, an increasing incidence of extra-abdominal and abdominal-wall aggressive fibromatosis was observed. The workup of patients improved and a trend towards a nonsurgical treatment policy was observed

The Expression of Epistemic Uncertainty Through the Use of Distal Demonstratives in Russian and Chinese: A Cognitive Analysis of Corpus Data

In both Russian and Chinese, there are conditional connectives that appear in the apodosis of conditional sentences and are derived from non-proximal demonstratives. This work will concentrate on the Russian conditional connective to and the Chinese conditional connective n\ue0, which share a similar development from distal demonstratives and exhibit similar syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. The analysis will take into account that both Russian to and Chinese n\ue0are fundamentally deictic and have a motivated semantic content, which is closely related to the respective distal deictic demonstratives with the meaning that. The main question addressed in this work is how the semantics of distal demonstratives can account for their interaction with environments marked by epistemic uncertainty. In order to explain how the spatial relationship is transferred to the modal domain, the research will draw upon the theoretical framework of Deictic Space Theory, a cognitive linguistic theory which grounds fundamental features of human language in spatial cognition. The analysis will show how the occurrence of distal deictics in constructions involving epistemic uncertainty can be explained as a metaphorical extension from the basic meanings of remoteness in space and time to remoteness in certainty

Anti-oestrogen therapy in the treatment of desmoid tumours. A systematic review

Abstract AIM: The treatment of desmoid tumours (DTs) is controversial. Anti-oestrogen therapy has frequently been used, but clear information of its efficacy is lacking. In this systematic review we have undertaken a comprehensive analysis to assess the effectiveness of anti-oestrogen therapy in terms of ability to induce partial or complete regression of DTs. METHOD: A systematic review of articles published in English between January 1983 and December 2009 was carried out according to the RECIST criteria. A literature search was performed on electronic databases including: United States National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE-PubMed), Excerpta Medica (EMBASE), Cochrane Library and Google search engine. Two-hundred articles dealing with DTs were identified but only fourty-one were were selected as appropriate for the study. The chi-square test was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Data on 168 DTs treated with anti-oestrogen agents, alone or in combination with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, were identified with an overall response rate of 51%. There was no difference in response according to the type of DTs or between different anti-oestrogen therapies. Combination with anti-inflammatory drugs did not improve the outcome. Toremifene was sometimes effective in cases resistant to tamoxifen. Response did not seem to be related to oestrogen receptor status. CONCLUSIONS: Despite potential inaccuracies in the methodology, the results of the review indicate that anti-oestrogen therapy produces some effect in about one half of patients with DTs. Its indication compared with other treatments is discussed

Flumen Fiume Rijeka Crocevia interculturale d'Europa

Fiume rappresenta un la­boratorio molto interessante per indagare le variabili che anima­no la coesistenza delle diversità, le sfide che essa pone, ma anche le potenzialità che da essa derivano, offrendo spunti preziosi per riflettere, a livello ben più ampio, sul futuro dell’Europa. I lavori presentati in questo volume affrontano la realtà fiumana da una prospettiva interdisciplinare, non solo storica quindi, ma anche giuridica, linguistica, letteraria e sociologica. I diversi contributi, con­centrati su singole prospettive, restituiscono appieno la ricchezza dell’identità di Fiume e confermano la costante capacità della città di porsi, nel tempo, quale crocevia interculturale d’Euro­pa, in grado di attingere da tutte le sue componen­ti nazionali, culturali e religiose per forgiare una propria specificità plurale ed aperta