Cinematic ethics of migration:First-person voices in contemporary documentary

This PhD research joins the growing interdisciplinary scholarship concerned with the relationship between migration and media by focusing on the ethical demands of first-person voices in contemporary documentary. First-person filmmaking, as I argue in this dissertation, comprises an everyday practice that is integral to migrants’ negotiation of various bordering mechanisms in Europe towards more sustaining ways of sharing the world with others. This raises two questions: How can first-person voices negotiate the confining forces of the European border regime to envision and enact alternative configurations of the everyday? And what are the ethically salient aspects of the collaborative labour involved in the production of first-person voices? To answer these questions, I draw from critical border studies, affect theory, and film-ethics to offer an audio-visual and production analysis of a corpus of films that together address diverse experiences of migration in Europe, including the decision to migrate, the migration journey itself, and the experiences of displacement and belonging. With this theoretical and methodological backdrop, I examine how first-person voices interrogate the various impasses created by the European border regime’s confinement of migrants’ knowledge production, mobility, inclusion and belonging. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that first-person voices enact migrants’ epistemic rights by defying the European border regime’s discursive practices; the right to autonomy of migration by grappling with the processes of migrant interpellation by the European border regime; the right to opacity by resisting the racialising, homogenising and reductive forces of the European border regime; and the right to in-betweenness by refusing the European border regime’s conflation of belonging with a singular location. In addition, on the basis of interviews with the directors of the films in corpus, I articulate how the process of expressing a first-person voice involves an extensive negotiation of vulnerability, trust, as well as contractual and creative rights. Overall, this dissertation elaborates how first-person voices in contemporary documentary advance a cinematic ethics of migration that is invested in transgressing the confinement effected by the contemporary coloniality of migration in Europe

Cinematic ethics of migration:First-person voices in contemporary documentary

This PhD research joins the growing interdisciplinary scholarship concerned with the relationship between migration and media by focusing on the ethical demands of first-person voices in contemporary documentary. First-person filmmaking, as I argue in this dissertation, comprises an everyday practice that is integral to migrants’ negotiation of various bordering mechanisms in Europe towards more sustaining ways of sharing the world with others. This raises two questions: How can first-person voices negotiate the confining forces of the European border regime to envision and enact alternative configurations of the everyday? And what are the ethically salient aspects of the collaborative labour involved in the production of first-person voices? To answer these questions, I draw from critical border studies, affect theory, and film-ethics to offer an audio-visual and production analysis of a corpus of films that together address diverse experiences of migration in Europe, including the decision to migrate, the migration journey itself, and the experiences of displacement and belonging. With this theoretical and methodological backdrop, I examine how first-person voices interrogate the various impasses created by the European border regime’s confinement of migrants’ knowledge production, mobility, inclusion and belonging. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that first-person voices enact migrants’ epistemic rights by defying the European border regime’s discursive practices; the right to autonomy of migration by grappling with the processes of migrant interpellation by the European border regime; the right to opacity by resisting the racialising, homogenising and reductive forces of the European border regime; and the right to in-betweenness by refusing the European border regime’s conflation of belonging with a singular location. In addition, on the basis of interviews with the directors of the films in corpus, I articulate how the process of expressing a first-person voice involves an extensive negotiation of vulnerability, trust, as well as contractual and creative rights. Overall, this dissertation elaborates how first-person voices in contemporary documentary advance a cinematic ethics of migration that is invested in transgressing the confinement effected by the contemporary coloniality of migration in Europe

Chained-Function Filter Synthesis Based on the Modified Jacobi Polynomials

A new class of filter functions with pass-band ripple which derives its origin from a method of determining the chained function lowpass filters described by Guglielmi and Connor is introduced. The closed form expressions of the characteristic functions of these filters are derived by using orthogonal Jacobi polynomial. Since the Jacobi polynomials can not be used directly as filtering function, these polynomials have been adapted by using the parity relation for Jacobi polynomials in order to be used as a filter approximating function. The obtained magnitude response of these filters is more general than the magnitude response of published Chebyshev and Legendre chained function filter, because two additional parameters of modified Jacobi polynomials as two additional degrees of freedom are available. It is shown that proposed modified Jacobi chained function filters approximation also includes the Chebyshev chained function filters, the Legendre chained function filter, and many other types of filter approximations, as its special cases

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Occupational exposure to blood and body fluids among health-care workers in Serbia

© 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel. Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the epidemiology of occupational accidents and self-reported attitude of health-care workers (HCWs) in Serbia. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among HCWs in selected departments of five tertiary care hospitals and in one secondary care hospital in February 2012. A previously developed self-administered questionnaire was provided to HCWs who had direct daily contact with patients. χ2 test and Student's t test were used for statistical analysis of the data. Results: Of the 1,441 potential participants, 983 (68.2%) completed the questionnaire: 655 (66.7%) were nurses/medical technicians, 243 (24.7%) were physicians and 85 (8.6%) were other personnel. Of the 983 participants, 291 (29.6%) HCWs had had at least one accident during the previous year and 106 (40.2%) of them reported it to the responsible person. The highest prevalence (68.6%) of accidents was among nurses/technicians (p = 0.001). Accidents occurred more often in large clinical centers (81.1%; p < 0.001) and in the clinical ward, intensive care unit and operating theater (p = 0.003) than in other departments. Seventy-six (13.1%) nurses/medical technicians had an accident during needle recapping (p < 0.001). Of all the HCWs, 550 (55.9%) were fully vaccinated, including significantly more doctors (154, 63.4%) than participants from other job categories (p < 0.001). Conclusion: There was a relatively high rate of accidents among HCWs in our hospitals, most commonly amongst nurses and staff working in clinical wards, intensive care units and operating theaters. The most common types of accidents were needlestick injuries and accidents due to improper handling of contaminated sharp devices or occuring while cleaning instruments or by coming into contact with blood through damaged skin or through the conjunctiva/mucous membranes

Antimicrobial use in European acute care hospitals: results from the second point prevalence survey (PPS) of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use, 2016 to 2017

Antimicrobial agents used to treat infections are life-saving. Overuse may result in more frequent adverse effects and emergence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms. In 2016-17, we performed the second point-prevalence survey (PPS) of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial use in European acute care hospitals. We included 1,209 hospitals and 310,755 patients in 28 of 31 European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries. The weighted prevalence of antimicrobial use in the EU/EEA was 30.5% (95% CI: 29.2-31.9%). The most common indication for prescribing antimicrobials was treatment of a community-acquired infection, followed by treatment of HAI and surgical prophylaxis. Over half (54.2%) of antimicrobials for surgical prophylaxis were prescribed for more than 1 day. The most common infections treated by antimicrobials were respiratory tract infections and the most commonly prescribed antimicrobial agents were penicillins with beta-lactamase inhibitors. There was wide variation of patients on antimicrobials, in the selection of antimicrobial agents and in antimicrobial stewardship resources and activities across the participating countries. The results of the PPS provide detailed information on antimicrobial use in European acute care hospitals, enable comparisons between countries and hospitals, and highlight key areas for national and European action that will support efforts towards prudent use of antimicrobials

Folding-competent and folding-defective forms of Ricin A chain have different fates following retrotranslocation from the endoplasmic reticulum

We report that a toxic polypeptide retaining the potential to refold upon dislocation from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the cytosol (ricin A chain; RTA) and a misfolded version that cannot (termed RTAΔ), follow ER-associated degradation (ERAD) pathways in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that substantially diverge in the cytosol. Both polypeptides are dislocated in a step mediated by the transmembrane Hrd1p ubiquitin ligase complex and subsequently degraded. Canonical polyubiquitylation is not a prerequisite for this interaction because a catalytically inactive Hrd1p E3 ubiquitin ligase retains the ability to retrotranslocate RTA, and variants lacking one or both endogenous lysyl residues also require the Hrd1p complex. In the case of native RTA, we established that dislocation also depends on other components of the classical ERAD-L pathway as well as an ongoing ER–Golgi transport. However, the dislocation pathways deviate strikingly upon entry into the cytosol. Here, the CDC48 complex is required only for RTAΔ, although the involvement of individual ATPases (Rpt proteins) in the 19S regulatory particle (RP) of the proteasome, and the 20S catalytic chamber itself, is very different for the two RTA variants. We conclude that cytosolic ERAD components, particularly the proteasome RP, can discriminate between structural features of the same substrate

Acute and longer-term cardiovascular conditions in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Coast Guard Cohort

Introduction: In 2010, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) led a clean-up response to the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. Human studies evaluating acute and longer-term cardiovascular conditions associated with oil spill-related exposures are sparse. Thus, we aimed to investigate prevalent and incident cardiovascular symptoms/conditions in the DHW Oil Spill Coast Guard Cohort. Methods: Self-reported oil spill exposures and cardiovascular symptoms were ascertained from post-deployment surveys (n = 4,885). For all active-duty cohort members (n = 45,193), prospective cardiovascular outcomes were classified via International Classification of Diseases, 9th Edition from military health encounter records up to 5.5 years post-DWH. We used log-binomial regression to calculate adjusted prevalence ratios (aPRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in the cross-sectional analyses and Cox Proportional Hazards regression to calculate adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) and 95% CIs for incident cardiovascular diagnoses during 2010–2015 and stratifying by earlier (2010–2012) and later (2013–2015) time periods. Results: Prevalence of chest pain was associated with increasing levels of crude oil exposure via inhalation (aPRhigh vs. none = 2.00, 95% CI = 1.16–3.42, p-trend = 0.03) and direct skin contact (aPRhigh vs. none = 2.72, 95% CI = 1.30–5.16, p-trend = 0.03). Similar associations were observed for sudden heartbeat changes and for being in the vicinity of burning oil exposure. In prospective analyses, responders (vs. non-responders) had an elevated risk for mitral valve disorders during 2013–2015 (aHR = 2.12, 95% CI = 1.15–3.90). Responders reporting ever (vs. never) crude oil inhalation exposure were at increased risk for essential hypertension, particularly benign essential hypertension during 2010–2012 (aHR = 2.00, 95% CI = 1.08–3.69). Responders with crude oil inhalation exposure also had an elevated risk for palpitations during 2013–2015 (aHR = 2.54, 95% CI = 1.36–4.74). Cardiovascular symptoms/conditions aPR and aHR estimates were generally stronger among responders reporting exposure to both crude oil and oil dispersants than among those reporting neither. Conclusions: In this large study of the DWH oil spill USCG responders, self-reported spill clean-up exposures were associated with acute and longer-term cardiovascular symptoms/conditions

Consanguinity decreases risk of breast cancer – cervical cancer unaffected

Marriages between third-degree and more distant relatives are common in many parts of the world. Offspring of consanguineous parents have increased morbidity and mortality related to recessive gene disorders. In a population with a high frequency of consanguinity, we examined the frequency of breast cancer (related in part to tumour genes) and cervical cancers (related to virus infection) among offspring of consanguineous and non-consanguineous parents. Study was done prospectively in the United Arab Emirates. Selected were married female citizens, ages 40–65, who attended 12 primary health care clinics for whatever reason. In a face-to-face interview, subjects were asked: (a) about consanguineous marriages in family; (b) if they have or have had breast or cervical cancer; (c) about family history of cancer, cancer screening and other parameters. Tumour diagnosis was confirmed by review of medical records. Of 1750 women invited into study, 1445 (79%) could be used in analysis. Among 579 (40%) women of consanguineous and 866 (60%) of non-consanguineous parents there were 24 and 54 with breast cancer, respectively (RR = 0.66, CI 0.42 – 1.06). In the 40 to 50 age group, breast cancer reported 13 of 446 women of consanguineous and 37 of 633 of non-consanguineous parents (RR = 0.50, Cl 0.27 – 0.93). Cervical cancer had 15 women in consanguineous and 32 in non-consanguineous group (RR = 0.70, Cl 0.38 – 1.28). Number of families with history of breast cancer in consanguineous and non-consanguineous group was 21 and 23, respectively (P = 0.29). The cancer screening rates and other variable values had fairly balanced distribution between the 2 groups. Having consanguineous parents decreases the risk of breast cancer especially in younger women, risk of cervical cancer being unaffected. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co